Rate My Professor Lauren O'Mahony

Lauren O’Mahony is a Senior Lecturer in Communication and Associate Dean Research in the School of Media and Communication at Murdoch University, where she has built a distinguished career spanning over 25 years. She commenced her studies at Murdoch in 1997 as an undergraduate, majoring in English and Comparative Literature before incorporating Criminology. She subsequently earned an Honours degree in Literature and completed her PhD in Communication in 2015, with a thesis entitled 'In Search of Feminist Romance in Australian "Chick Lit"'. During her doctoral studies, O’Mahony taught various units across campuses, including serving as an instructor for the first student cohort at Murdoch University’s Dubai study centre. Upon returning to the Perth campus, she joined the School of Media and Communication full-time, progressing to her current senior lecturing role while contributing to research leadership as Associate Dean Research.

O’Mahony specializes in Global Media and Communication, fostering students’ critical, analytical, and creative thinking skills through her teaching. She embeds key themes such as sustainability, climate change, human-animal relationships, equity, diversity, inclusion, and First Nations perspectives into her units, encouraging nuanced analysis of media representations. Her research explores intersections of media, communication, gender, sustainability, creativity, and cultural studies, with a particular focus on Australian women’s literature, romance fiction, necropolitics in popular media, identity performance during the COVID-19 era, and animal activism in news framing. Key publications include the co-edited volumes 'Performing Identity in the Era of COVID-19' (2023) and 'Creativity and Innovation: Everyday Dynamics and Practice' (2023); chapters such as 'Necropolitics in a post-apocalyptic zombie diaspora: The case of AMC’s The Walking Dead' (2021) and 'Stitching together feminism, genre(s) and couture in The Dressmaker (2015)' (2026); and articles like 'Death and the Australian rural romance novel' (2017), 'Calm the farm or incite a riot? Animal activists and the news media: A public relations case study in agenda-setting and framing' (2021), and 'The everyday experiences of female electric vehicle owners: insights from Western Australia' (2025). Her contributions have earned recognition through the Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2013 and a nomination for Excellence in Postgraduate Research Supervision in 2022. O’Mahony takes particular pride in witnessing the success of her students and supervisees, including notable alumni like Zahra al Hilaly, WA Young Person of the Year 2022.