Mitch Alexander
Mitch Alexander is a PhD candidate, vocalist, metalhead, comedian, philosopher, commentator, podcaster, vegetarian, reductionist utilitarian who hates labels. He has a Masters in Philosophy from Monash University, over 20 million online streams with his band Eye Of The Enemy, was an amateur comedian for a decade, and his previous comedy/politics podcast Not Good Enough regularly charted in the Top 10 of Australian shows. He is currently researching the role digital platforms such as Instagram and YouTube are playing in Australian comedy. It is an interdisciplinary project incorporating platform studies, his previous work in philosophy, notions of persona and authenticity, and investigations into cultural and industrial disruptions taking place in the Australian comedy scene.
Suchi Chowdhury
Suchi is a PhD candidate at RMIT University, Melbourne, researching stand-up comedy in India. Her study focuses upon how politics and stand-up impact upon each other. She is creating data through interviews, ethnographic study, and textual analysis.
Born and raised in India, she moved to Melbourne eighteen years ago and has worked in TAFE and tertiary education. In her other life in India, she worked in advertising, journalism, and public relations.
She graduated from Monash University with a master’s degree in Communication & Media Studies in 2018. Earlier in India, she graduated with a master’s degree in Comparative Literature. She lives in suburban Melbourne with her husband and two children.
Suchi’s recent work has been published in Open Library of Humanities (2024).
Bradley J. Dixon
Bradley J. Dixon is a writer, critic, and media scholar working on Wurundjeri country in Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on developments in social and new media technologies and their effects on art, culture, and everyday life.
Fergus Edwards
Fergus is a Lecturer in English at the University of Tasmania. His research focuses on the ways in which literature conveys complex and intellectually demanding ideas to broad and non-specialist audiences; he is particularly interested in Tom Stoppard’s plays and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy.
He holds a PhD in English from UTAS and an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University.
His work has been published by The Literary Encyclopedia (2025), The Conversation (2025), the European Journal of Humour Studies (2024), Philosophy and Literature (2023), and Philosophy Now (2023), and he is a regular guest on ABC Hobart.
Kyle Harvey
Dr Kyle Harvey is a Research Fellow in the School of Media, Film and Journalism, and works on the Australian Research Council-funded Linkage Project Comedy Country: Australian Performance Country as an Agent of Change. His research explores the lived experiences of migration, culture and social change in Australian media and performance, and is particularly focused on the intersecting processes of diasporas, mobility and performance in Australia, Asia, and the Middle East. Kyle’s research also encompasses media history, migration history, and the history of radicalism and social movements, oral history, intellectual history, memory, biography, and the history of education.
Kyle’s work has been published in Media International Australia (2020), History Australia (2017), Labour History (2016) and in edited collections such as The Oxford Handbook of Peace History (2022), Translating Worlds: Migration, Memory and Culture (2020) and Remembering Migration: Oral Histories and Heritage in Australia (2019).
Til Knowles
Til Knowles is a PhD student at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Her PhD research focuses on the impact of suicide jokes told by stand-up comedians in post-2000 Australia. Her PhD is associated with the ARC Linkage Project Comedy Country: Australian Performance Comedy as an Agent of Change. She’s interested in the role of authenticity, community, mediation and confession in contemporary performance comedy. Til holds a research Masters from the University of Melbourne entitled: “Larrikins, listeners and Lifeline: inside Australian comedy chatcast The Little Dum Dum Club”, which examined the performance of cultural conventions and community in comedy podcasts. Til is also a pop culture critic, speculative fiction nerd and occasional podcaster, hosting the Australasian Humour Studies Network podcast Serrated Edge.
Along with Bradley J. Dixon, Mitch Alexander, Jacob Sacher, Kyle Harvey and Suchi Chowdhury, Til is a co-founder of the Australian Comedy Studies Collective.
Jacob Sacher
Jacob Sacher is an award winning alternative comedian. He is a practioner researcher working in the field of alternative comedy, and Jewish comedy. His current research, as part of a Masters-by-Research looks at the role of the “loser” in Jewish comedy, across time and discipline, and investigates the fringe circuit more broadly. He is also the chairperson of the not-for-profit comedy theatre Cornershop Comedy.
Justine Sless
Justine Sless: comedian, author and teacher of comedy and creative writing. Sless has a masters by research in creative writing from La Trobe University. Her research is on gender, humour and humour as a power construct in the wider gender based violence lens. Justine’s thesis was adapted into a book Mistress of Mirth’s COMEDY Tour. She teaches comedy in workplaces, libraries and schools, and teaches creative writing using comedy writing techniques. Her second book was Measured Silk and Other Stories, a meditation on loneliness. Her third book will be published in the UK in 2026, historical fiction about stand-up comedy set in the North of England in 1978, the focus is on class, gender and what it takes to be a comedian on the working men’s club circuit. Justine is a member of Australasian Humour Studies Network and is on the board of Centre for Australian Comedic Action.
Nicole Smith
Nicole was first published in the local paper when she was 12 years old. It was a science fiction story called Just Another Day in Space. Since then, she has realised that there are no days in space. More recently her first book, Sideshow, published by Seizure (now Brio Books), won the 2014 Viva La Novella Prize, and made the long list for the Dobby Award. Sideshow has also been produced as an audiobook, read by the author, and released by Author’s Republic. Her play, Local Hero, premiered at La Mama and is published by the Australian Script Centre. She was granted a Hothouse ‘Month in the Country’ residency to creatively develop Local Hero with actors. She has also been commissioned by the Arts Centre to create new work for young audiences and worked as a script assessor.
Nicole toured internationally for a decade with the aerial dance company Strange Fruit and has a Masters of Screenwriting with distinction from the Victorian College of the Arts Film School. She is currently working on her PhD with The University of Tasmania researching comedy and the environment.