NICHOLE GEORGEOU [BCA,
Dip. Ed., MA, PhD] is a Senior Lecturer in Humanitarian and Development Studies, Western Sydney University. Prior to 2016 she was a lecturer in International Development and Global Studies at Australian Catholic University in Sydney. During 2011-2014 she was a director of Palms Australia , an independent Australian Volunteer Sending
Agency, and she is a member of the Interim Executive Committee of the Oceania chapter of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP).
A graduate of the University of Wollongong , Nichole’s PhD thesis
(2011) formed part of an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant between the University of Wollongong and Palms Australia. Prior
to this, she completed a MA (Research) thesis on state-citizen relations in Japan and changing notions
of volunteering. Nichole has lived and worked in Japan , and reads and speaks the
Japanese language.
Her current research interests are in Security Sector Reform and its articulation with states and
doctrines of Responsibility to Protect. Nichole is currently engaged in field
work and research for a book, co-authored with University of Wollongong colleague Dr. Charles Hawksley, on Policing and the Responsibility to Protect in Oceania .
Before she came to academia, Nichole worked in a variety of
jobs, including school teaching and arts management. She also spent a number of
years in the field during the 1990s, variously working as an aid volunteer and
aid organiser/manager in Japan and in Vietnam .
It has been said of Nichole’s scholarship that ‘it is her
hands-on and frontline volunteer/aid experience that uniquely endows her work
with perspective, nuance, depth and relevance’. In 2008, discussing the roots
of Nichole’s scholarly work, Asian Currents (e-bulletin of the Asian
Studies Association of Australia) explained:
Nichole’s interest in the relationship between
government policy and models of volunteering was first piqued in Japan where she founded and
ran a volunteer organisation which raised funds for women’s literacy and income
generation projects in Northern Vietnam . Working alongside
UNICEF Hanoi and the Vietnam Women’s Union , this experience
raised many questions about ‘development’ both as a concept and industry, and
in particular the role of volunteers in sustainable development projects. After
experiencing first hand the shifts and changes in attitudes to volunteering as
well as national policy after the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake that hit
the city of Kobe in Japan , the experience also inspired a
curiosity about the way in which state-citizen relations impact on notions of
volunteering.
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