Rate My Professor Donna Lyon

Associate Professor Donna Lyon, PhD, is a distinguished film producer and academic at the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, where she serves as Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Producing at the Victorian College of the Arts. She earned her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2019, a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from Monash University in 2012, a Postgraduate Diploma in Film and Television Producing from the University of Melbourne's VCA in 2006, and a Bachelor of Arts in Performance Studies from Victoria University in 2005. With more than 15 years in the film and television industry, Lyon lectures in the Master of Producing program and holds the position of Associate Director of Teaching and Learning, fostering innovative creative practice and research.

Lyon's research interests encompass digital archives, participatory arts projects, and the integration of creative arts with sport and wellbeing. She founded the Left Write Hook program during her PhD, an evidence-based intervention pairing creative writing and boxing to aid adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse and trauma in reclaiming agency and healing. Delivered to 68 participants across 10 Melbourne community sites, the program has demonstrated through peer-reviewed studies significant decreases in depression, anxiety, stress, and PTSD symptoms, alongside enhanced emotional wellbeing. As Founder and CEO of the national charity Left Write Hook since 2022, she has trained 14 facilitators with lived experience and leads a randomised control trial funded by the Medical Research Future Fund, running until 2027 in partnership with the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. Lyon co-produced the feature documentary Left Write Hook (2024), directed by Dr Shannon Owen, which premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival, secured the 2024 MIFF Intrepid Audience Award, and achieved a national cinema release in October 2024. Her scholarly contributions include Left Write Hook: trial protocol for a community-based type II hybrid implementation-effectiveness trial (Trials, 2025), Left / Write // Hook: A mixed method study of a writing and boxing workshop for survivors of childhood sexual abuse and trauma (International Journal of Wellbeing, 2020), Narrating the preservation of a film school archive – Re-configuring access (Archival Science, 2023), and multiple 2025 publications in Studies in Australasian Cinema on ethical documentary production and interdisciplinary collaboration. Recognized as an award-winning producer, her impactful work earned finalist status for the 2025 Shaping Australia People's Choice Community Champion Award.