Rate My Professor Benjamin Sacks

Dr Benjamin Sacks is a Senior Lecturer in Academic Communication Development in the Faculty of Business and Law at Curtin University. He earned his PhD in History from the University of Western Australia, where his doctoral research centered on the history of cricket in Samoa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Prior to or concurrent with his studies at the University of Western Australia School of Humanities, Sacks developed expertise in the transcultural adoption and adaptation of sports in Oceania. In his current role, he supports students' academic skills development, particularly higher degree by research candidates, through workshops and events such as Thesis Fest, where he presented sessions on strategies for completing PhDs using creative analogies from 1980s rock ballads.

Sacks' research specializations include the history of sport, history of Oceania, higher education, and language and learning. His scholarship has garnered 64 citations. Key publications feature 'Cricket, kirikiti and imperialism in Samoa, 1879-1939' (2019, 23 citations), '#REALTALK: Facebook Confessions pages as a data resource for academic and student support services at universities' co-authored with Catie Gressier and Justine Maldon (Learning, Media and Technology, 2021, 16 citations), 'A footnote to sport history: Twenty years of cricket, conflict and contestation in Samoa, 1880–1900' (2017, 8 citations), and ''Running Away with Itself’: Missionaries, Islanders and the Reimagining of Cricket in Samoa, 1830–1939' (2017, 8 citations). Additional contributions include chapters such as 'Looking Back and Beyond: Exploring the Past and Present of Cricket and Kirikiti in Oceania' (2024) and various sections on cricket's colonial context in Samoa published around 2019. In 2016, Sacks received the Gigliola Gori Award from the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport for his paper on cricket in Samoa. His work on social media data from university Facebook Confessions pages informs academic support practices, revealing shifts toward active and group-based learning among students. Sacks' publications appear in journals like the Journal of Pacific History and edited volumes on Pacific Island sport sociology, contributing to understandings of imperial sport dynamics and contemporary pedagogical insights.