Rate My Professor Denise Woods

Dr. Denise Woods serves as Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of Learning and Teaching in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry within the Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University. She coordinates and teaches core units in the Bachelor of Communications program, delivered at the Bentley campus in Western Australia as well as offshore campuses in Dubai, Mauritius, Malaysia, and Singapore. Her teaching incorporates topics such as Asian media in transition and Korean popular media, including K-dramas and K-Pop. Woods has supervised honours research projects examining Korean popular culture and its contributions to Australian cultural identities and cosmopolitan views. She holds leadership roles including Convenor of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network and membership in the Centre for Culture and Technology.

Her research encompasses media studies, cultural studies, Asian Studies, and Asian Australian studies, with focuses on representations of Asia in Australian media and public library collections, negotiations of cultural identities through events like the Eurovision Asia Song Contest, and portrayals of identity, disability, and Asia in media. Key publications include “I don’t care about Asia”: Teaching Asia in Australia co-authored with Susan Leong (2017); From Eurovision to Asiavision: the Eurovision Asia Song Contest and negotiation of Australia’s cultural identities (2020); Representations of Asia in Western Australian public library collections co-authored with Hollie White (2021); Australia in Asia: Negotiating Pauline Hanson in the Southeast Asian press co-authored with Ien Ang, Sam Chalmers, Lisa Law, and Mandy Thomas (2000); Good guys, bad guys: Images of the Australian soldier in East Timor (2001); and Jumping the Queue co-authored with GT Espak and S Fatnowna (2002). Additional contributions appear in the Journal of Australian Studies, Media International Australia, and the book Alter/Asians: Asian-Australian Identities in Art, Media and Popular Culture. Woods has participated in academic symposia, seminars on disability representation, and conferences such as the Asian Australian Identities series.