About the School of Business and Creative Industries
In the School of Business and Creative Industries, our mission is ‘educating to make a difference’ in a dynamic and fast-moving world.
Our teaching and research are powered by strong industry connections, giving students hands-on experience and ensuring our work tackles real-world challenges – locally and globally. With a sharp focus on entrepreneurship, small business growth, and the creative industries, we lead impactful research that sparks innovation, drives social change, and shapes the next generation of leaders and changemakers.
The School is led by Dean Professor Mark Loon and Associate Deans Deanna Grant-Smith (Research) and Dr Shahab Pourfakhimi (Learning and Teaching).
2025: Collaboration and impact
In 2025, the School focused on further strengthening its research culture and performance. Our researchers secured 10 funded projects and doubled both Category 1 and Category 2 funding, including a National Intelligence Discovery Grant awarded to Associate Professors Renee Barnes and Rory Mulcahy, a Queensland Engaging Science Grant, Screen Australia funding, and a Queensland Government Regional University Industry Collaboration Program grant.
The School’s research publication output remained steady, with a 15 percent increase in Q1 publications (rising to 78.1 percent), and strong performance across non-traditional research outputs and those common in creative arts disciplines. Higher degree by research (HDR) completions also remained steady, supported by writing groups, retreats and workshops, professional development panels, inter-school collaborations and more.
The School continued to develop and nurture strong relationships with industry and government, including partnerships with Sunshine Coast Council and the City of Moreton Bay, Queensland’s Department of Employment, Small Business and Training, and the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS). We have also grown our international partnerships, welcoming visiting scholars and working with international institutions such as Salzburg Business School and Bern University of Applied Sciences.
Highlights
- The School laid the foundations for circular economy company Coreo to become the School’s first Business in Residence, and continued our ongoing collaboration with immersive virtual reality company Haven XR.
- A new research collective, Creative Regions Organisation and Work (CROW), was created by co-leads Professor Deanna Grant-Smith and Dr Sarah Casey to nurture emerging critical scholarship around creative industries, labour, and regional and rural communities. CROW will apply for formal research cluster status in 2026.
- The School hosted the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Communication Association (AANZCA) conference at UniSC Sunshine Coast. Supported by a DCVRI Accelerate grant and organised by Dr Harry Dugmore, the conference welcomed 280 participants across 74 sessions.
- The School also co-hosted the 3rd annual online International Roundtable on Critical Perspectives on Multilevel Marketing with Radboud University in the Netherlands, which was attended by academics from Australia, Europe and the US, along with representatives of the US Federal Trade Commission.
- Associate Professor Gail Crimmins undertook the School’s annual research sabbatical, in which she completed research on AI literacy and ethical AI use in higher education.
Celebrating our people
- Dr Sarah Casey was awarded the 2025 Vice Chancellor and President’s Award for Excellence in Research Impact for her research program on the experiences of women in rural and regional Australia. Dr Casey also commenced her term as President of the Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Association.
- Dr Leah Barclay was awarded a Queensland Smithsonian Fellowship to study sonic ecologies in Panama in 2026.
- Dean Professor Mark Loon was appointed Vice President of the Australian Business Dean Council (to commence in 2026).
- Professor Deanna Grant-Smith became a Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow.
Making a difference: Our research in action
Winning well: Transforming wellbeing across Australian high-performance sport
Elite athletes approaching the end of their careers often face identity loss, anxiety, and uncertainty about life beyond sport. However, the demands of elite competition mean that many don’t engage with support until these challenges become significant. While coaches play an important role in supporting athlete wellbeing, they have historically been overlooked in formal wellbeing frameworks. At the same time, senior leaders within sporting organisations – including CEOs, managers and performance directors – have lacked the evidence needed to understand how their decisions, organisational cultures and policies impact the wellbeing and experiences of athletes and staff.
In partnership with the Australian Institute of Sport, School researcher Dr David Fleischman has been working to address this gap through the AIS Coach Performance Wellbeing Research Program. Established in 2021, the program delivers world-leading research to support the AIS in implementing its High-Performance 2032+ (‘Win Well)’ Strategy, which recognises the wellbeing of athletes, coaches and staff as a driver of sustained high performance, rather than a competing priority. In collaboration with researchers from Griffith University, Australian Catholic University and AIS staff, the program comprised three interlinking projects exploring the role of coaches in athlete career transitions, how coach wellbeing can be prioritised, and how organisational decisionmaking shapes coaches’ wellbeing. The research drew on interviews, surveys and workshops with coaches, athletes, wellbeing staff and leaders across 29 sports.
The findings and eight co-design recommendations have been embedded in the Australian Sports Commission’s Coach Development Strategy, and were key to the development of the AIS Coach Performance Wellbeing Framework.
Together, these initiatives have strengthened alignment across national sporting organisations and institutes, coach development teams, and system partners, contributing to a genuine cultural shift toward coach wellbeing across Olympic, Paralympic, and Commonwealth pathways. The findings have also helped the AIS to better target its athlete career and education services at key transition points.
Finally, the research has given organisational leaders insight into how decisions around succession planning, leave structures, communication norms, and family support shape coach performance and retention. These findings informed the development of the HP Coach Development Capability System Tool, which established coach performance wellbeing as a recognised area of support within the broader sports system. Internationally, the research has informed leadership practice at Sport Ireland in managing world-class programs in complex environments.
Listening to ecosystems: Transforming conservation through acoustic ecology
Freshwater and marine ecosystems are among the world’s most vulnerable, yet what happens beneath the water’s surface remains largely inaccessible, with many ecosystems lacking documentation or long-term data. Given the pressures of climate change, pollution, extraction, and habitat loss, there is an urgent need for accessible and engaging tools that can help us better understand and protect these environments.
Over the past 15 years, School researcher and sound artist Dr Leah Barclay has championed listening as one of the most powerful yet underused monitoring tools available. Launched in 2014, her project River Listening pioneered the use of non-invasive hydrophone technology to monitor aquatic biodiversity in 16 river systems across Australia, the UK, Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific. Biosphere Soundscapes adopted a similar methodology in 20+ UNESCO Biosphere Reserves across Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and the Asia-Pacific to document and respond to changing ecosystems. Sonic Reef, developed in collaboration with Griffith University and the Australian Marine Conservation Society, applied this interdisciplinary approach to the Great Barrier Reef, using a decade of hydrophone recordings to advance both scientific monitoring and public engagement with one of the world’s most threatened marine ecosystems.
Dr Barclay’s research has informed national and international conservation policy, helping to establish acoustic monitoring as a recognised tool for conservation and climate adaptation. This led to the inclusion of acoustic ecology as an accepted monitoring approach in the Lima Action Plan, the international framework guiding the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves. Her work is widely featured in textbooks and university teaching resources. Since 2015, she has facilitated more than 150 workshops across six countries, equipping Traditional Owners, landholders and community members with the skills to use hydrophones and ecoacoustic methods to monitor local waterways while strengthening their connection to local ecosystems.
Public engagement has been central to Dr Barclay’s work. Her augmented reality sound installations have been presented in 12 cities internationally, reaching over 24,000 listeners. Landmark installations at Times Square for Climate Week, the Eiffel Tower for the United Nations COP21 Climate Change Conference, the Smithsonian Museum, the World Conservation Congress, and the 50th anniversary of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves have brought the sounds of aquatic ecosystems to global audiences.
Together, these projects have transformed the way people listen to and understand aquatic environments.
Looking ahead: 2026 and beyond
The School remains committed to delivering research that creates meaningful impact through thought leadership, strategic partnerships and a culture of excellence that advances both academic knowledge and societal outcomes. Under new research leadership, the School will continue to strengthen an externally engaged and strategically aligned research agenda that supports UniSC’s priorities.
Key areas of focus for 2026 are capability building, collaboration and consolidation. The School will implement revised research governance arrangements, including updated committee structures, role descriptions and performance expectations, while introducing an annual staff survey to assess research culture, identify professional development needs and support evidence-based decision-making.
Further initiatives include reviewing the Research Excellence Scheme and AACSB research metrics to better reflect the School’s interdisciplinary strengths, formalising governance arrangements for research clusters, and developing a strategy to maximise the contribution of adjunct academics.
The School will also formally establish its first Business in Residence partnership with COREO, and continue to promote and strengthen industry collaborations and partnerships locally, nationally and internationally.