Rate My Professor Benjamin Matthews

Dr Benjamin Matthews is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Creative Industries within the College of Human and Social Futures at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy in 2010, Bachelor of Arts (Honours), and Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies from the University of Newcastle. His cross-disciplinary research explores the intersections of communication, design, and technology to shape the future of industry, culture, and sustainability. Key areas include transdisciplinary innovation and emerging technologies such as extended reality (XR) for teaching, learning, creative practice, and remote presence; artificial intelligence and automation's impact on creative work and design education; design thinking's potential and limitations from discursive, ethical, and more-than-human perspectives; microbial biotechnology for sustainable industries; citizen science; First Nations collaborations; and behavioral science integrated with creative industries methods to address challenges like youth debt, antimicrobial resistance, and mobile phone use while driving. Matthews bridges humanities, creative industries, and science, emphasizing human-centered, ethical innovation.

Prior to academia, Matthews held media industry roles in Newcastle and Sydney and contributed to new undergraduate and masters programs at the University of Technology Sydney in 2016 and Western Sydney University in 2017. He is co-founder of Wild Yeast Zoo, a hybrid citizen science project and biotech company developing an ethically sourced library of wild Australian microbes for food, agriculture, and bio-based manufacturing, aligned with the Nagoya Protocol to protect First Nations intellectual property. The initiative completed CSIRO’s ON Accelerate program and secured over one million dollars in funding for research and commercialization. He leads projects with partners like the Awabakal Local Aboriginal Land Council on microbes in native flora. Notable publications include the book Understanding Journalism (2018, with L.S. Burns); chapters such as Transdisciplinarity and the Role of Creative Industries in Science and Technology Research Teams (2025, with E. Gibbs et al.) and Who gets to wear the black turtleneck? Questioning the profession of design thinking (2023, with S. Cloke and M. Roxburgh); journal articles including Destroy All Humans: The Dematerialisation of the Designer in an Age of Automation (2023), Crisis and extended realities: remote presence in the time of COVID-19 (2020), and Compassion-Focused Technologies: Reflections and Future Directions (2021); and reports like ROBOTS ATE MY HOMEWORK (2021). He teaches Design Thinking and Innovation, Digital Media Engagement, and Professional Career Ready Studio, integrating real-world challenges and interdisciplinary skills. Matthews serves on the editorial board of Virtual Creativity and influences creative industries through research on XR, AI, and sustainable innovation.