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Jason Ensor is a PhD Candidate supervised by Professor Richard Nile at the Institute for Media, Creative Arts and Technology (Murdoch University) and Associate Professor Tim Dolin at the School of Media, Society and Culture (Curtin University of Technology) in Perth, Western Australia. The title of his dissertation is “Places of Publication and the Australian Book Trade: A Study of Angus & Robertson’s London Office, 1938-1970″. Jason will be submitting his thesis before international examiners in early August 2010. He has a Master of Arts by thesis (“Towards Critical Cultural Foresight: Australian Futures Studies”) from The University of Queensland (School of English, Media Studies and Art History), a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in communication and cultural studies (The University of Queensland, Department of English), and a Postgraduate Diploma in Australian Studies by thesis (The University of Queensland, Australian Studies Centre). From 2000-2006, he developed online content and business / client management systems for Queensland-based peak arts organizations and in 2003 won the Executive Director’s Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Contribution to the Woodford Folk Festival.

Jason Ensor’s publications have ranged across subjects as diverse as Armageddon, Australian literature, Benny Hinn, Jehovah’s Witnesses, print culture studies, refugees and technology. Jason’s early work reflects the concerns of his masters’ thesis which developed links between religious conceptions of apocalypse and the secular fin-de-siècle in Australia during the turn of the millennium. Though Jason has moved recently into the field of Australian literature for his PhD (using technology to pose new questions about the history of Australian publishing), he still holds an intense fascination with apocalyptic discourse and hopes to return to researching end time thinking and consumption in contemporary Australia one day. His current work explores the application of quantitative methodologies to traditional qualitative disciplines like Australian literature. As his list of publications might confirm though, Jason’s research interests also include: Australian Studies (History, Culture, Literature), Computer Gaming and Virtual Worlds, New Empiricism and Book History, Web Technologies and Computer-Human Interaction, Consumption and Everyday Life, Screen and Media Culture, Eschatology, Apocalypse and Society, and the Politics of Fear. He is also a regular contributor to the Postcolonial Literature Network of the Routledge Annotated Bibliography of English Studies (ABES).

In 2007 Jason Ensor was a speaker at the annual Association for the Study of Australian Literature conference (Brisbane, Queensland) and in 2008, through being awarded a ASAL Postgraduate Travel Scholarship, was a speaker at the Australian Literature in a Global World conference hosted by the University of Wollongong (Sydney, New South Wales). In 2009, he gave a talk on the Australian book trade in the 1930s at the Australasian Association of Literature’s third annual conference, Literature and Politics, hosted by the University of Sydney. Drawing on an extensive background in publishing during the 1990s (where he production edited the Journal of Australian Studies, Australian Cultural History, UQP Australian Studies and Symposia Series, and the inaurgual edition of New Talents), he has worked as production editor and cover designer of A History of Dentistry in Western Australia (by John Yiannakis, Network Books, Forthcoming 2009) and Odysseus and the Golden West (also by John Yiannakis, Network Books, Forthcoming 2009), as co-cover designer (with Matt Ibbitson) on The Northbridge History Studies Papers (edited by John Yiannakis and Felicity Morel-EdnieBrown, Network Books, launched May 2009), and as the developer of the online Australian Common Reader project and the Australian Public Intellectual (API) Network website (since July 2006). From October 2008 to March 2009, Jason was a university associate on Richard Nile’s CI-1 ARC Discovery grant “Colonial Publishing and Literary Democracy in Australia: An Analysis of the Influence on Australian Literature of British and Australian Publishing” and has frequently assisted academics setup their blogs. He is currently writing up his PhD dissertation and will be submitting by May 2010. In the meantime, he has three forthcoming articles discussing new empiricism in Australian print cultures studies: “Is a Picture Worth 10,175 Australian Novels?”, “Still Waters Run Deep: Empirical Methods and the Migration Patterns of Regional Publishers’ Authors and Titles within Australian Literature” and “A Policy of Splendid Isolation: Angus & Robertson, George G Harrap and the politics of co-operation in the Australian book trade during the late 1930s”. When he is not analyzing 18,000 documents from the Angus & Robertson archives, Jason is researching the calculus of identity in persistent MMORPG virtual worlds and exploring the use of social media in disciplinary and educational contexts through AustLiterature.Net.

AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS

Association for the Study of Australian Literature Postgraduate Travel Scholarship (Awarded 2008)
Australian Literary Cultures, Australian Intellectual Cultures and Western Australian culture and History Award (2007)
Australian Postgraduate Award (2007)
Australian Research Council Scholarship (2006)
PhD Completion Scholarship, Murdoch University (2010)
Executive Director’s Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Contribution to the Woodford Folk Festival (2003)
GICT (Government Information and Communications Technology register) Accreditation (2003)

QUALIFICATIONS

Bachelor of Arts (Communication and Cultural Studies), Department of English, The University of Queensland, 1993
Postgraduate Diploma in Australian Studies (Thesis), Australian Studies Centre, 1995
Master of Arts (Thesis), School of English, Media Studies and Art History, 2001
PhD Candidate (Thesis), Institute for Media, Creative Arts and Technology, Murdoch University, Current Studies

POSITIONS HELD

Senior Research Technician, Australian Studies Centre, University of Queensland, 1995-1997
Research Assistant, Department of Sociology, University of Queensland, 1996-1998
Graduate Research Assistant, Department of English, The University of Queensland, 1997-2000
Production Editor, Australian Studies Centre, The University of Queensland, 1998-2000
Sole Trader (as The Dot Squad), Content and Business Management Software Developer, 2000-2006
Developer (Primary), Arts Queensland IT Partnership Project, 2002-2003
Graduate Research Assistant, Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, 2006-2008
Developer (Primary), Australian Common Reader Project, Curtin University of Technology, 2007-2008
University Associate, Australia Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, 2008-2009
Production Editor and Designer, Network Books, 2009-

RESEARCH INTERESTS