Rate My Professor Kaya Barry

Dr Kaya Barry is a cultural geographer and artist who researches experiences of migration and mobility, the influences of weather and climate, as well as visual aesthetics and material cultures through creative arts research methods at Griffith University's Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. She holds the position of Senior Lecturer and Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow. Barry completed her Doctor of Philosophy in Art and Tourism Geography at Deakin University from 2012 to 2015 and earned a Bachelor of Arts with Honours. Her academic career includes a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Griffith University prior to her current senior lectureship appointment.

Barry leads the Confronting Crisis program within the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research and serves on the steering committee of the Australian Mobilities Network. Her ARC DECRA project (DE220100394) investigates the effects of unseasonable weather on migrant farm workers and produce in Queensland, informing public exhibitions such as Snapshots and Smiles: Queensland's Migrant Farm Workers in 2024 and a submission to the Australian Government's Review of Regional Migration Settings. Notable publications encompass Unseasonable seasons: Shifting geographies of weather and produce (2025, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers), The tourism-migration nexus: working holiday visa politics and repurposing tourists as temporary agricultural workers (2025, Tourism Geographies), Deep Weathered Jam: Creative Conversations with Geologic Time (2024), From tourists to essential workers: The multifaceted experiences of Pacific migrant farm workers in Australia (2024, Journal of Rural Studies), Challenges of creative collaboration in geographical research (2020, cultural geographies), and contributions to Creative Measures of the Anthropocene: Art, Mobilities, and the Anthropocene (2020). Her research influences discussions on policy, agriculture, and cultural geography through media contributions in The Conversation and South China Morning Post, alongside artistic practices in photography and participatory workshops.