Rate My Professor Michelle Duffy

Michelle Duffy serves as an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the School of Rural Health at Monash University. Earlier in her career at Monash, she held the position of Senior Lecturer and Discipline Head in Sociology at Monash University Gippsland. Prior to these roles, she taught Australian Studies at the Australian Centre and Australian Indigenous Studies and Cultural Geography in the School of Social and Environmental Enquiry at the University of Melbourne. Duffy holds a PhD in cultural geography from the University of Melbourne, a Bachelor of Applied Science from RMIT University, and Bachelor of Music (Honours) and Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of Melbourne.

Duffy's research specializations center on the ways sound, listening, emotion, and affect contribute to place-making and community building. Her interests include the role emotions and affect play in processes of place-making, encompassing social cohesion, wellbeing, inclusion, and alienation; the cultural, social, and physiological processes of listening; and the cultural politics of emotion in contexts of sustainability, resilience, and rural Australia. Broader themes encompass embodiment, belonging, public space, festivals, community, tourism studies, and social and cultural geography. She has generated 25 research outputs, including 13 peer-reviewed journal articles, 7 book chapters, 2 books, and 2 short reviews, with activity recorded from 2005 to 2023. Key publications are 'Ballet in a box: iso-ballet, lockdown, and the reconstruction of the domestic space' (2023, GeoHumanities); 'Practising lively geographies in the city: encountering Melbourne through experimental field-based workshops' (2020, Journal of Geography in Higher Education); 'Thresholds of representation: Physical disability in dance and perceptions of the moving body' (2019); 'Why Isn’t There a Plan? Community Vulnerability and Resilience in the Latrobe Valley’s Open Cut Coal Mine Town' (2017); 'Music of place: Community identity in contemporary Australian music festivals' (book); 'The Art of Doing (Geographies of) Music' (2007); 'Bodily rhythms: corporeal capacities to engage with festival spaces' (2011); 'Performing identity within a multicultural framework' (2005); and 'Listening and tourism studies' (2010). Duffy served as Primary Chief Investigator on projects such as Baw Baw Community Planning Pilot Evaluation (2013), Baw Baw Quality of Life in Participation and Community Involvement (2013), and Images of Home: Children's Creative Response to the Changing Landscape of Officer (2010-2011, funded by VicHealth).