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Dr Skye Doherty

Senior Lecturer

School of Communication and Arts
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Senior Lecturer

Graduate School
s.doherty@uq.edu.au
+61 7 334 68260

Overview

Skye Doherty is expert in using creative and design-led research methods to explore alternative futures and address wicked problems. Her work has addressed issues in journalism, law, education, and disaster resilience, among others and has led to both conceptual and practical outcomes. Her design artefacts include the NewsCube, an award-winning storytelling tool and Vim, a tangible energy story. She has developed frameworks for journalism innovation and used codesign to design media for bushfire resilience and to improve the experiences of injured workers, a project that led to legislative change. Her current project – Wicked Thinking – uses speculative news to envision the futures of complext issues.

She leads the Global Change Scholars Program in the UQ Graduate School – a year-long PhD experience focused on research collaboration and impact. She also leads the Advocacy and the Public Good theme within the Centre for Communication and Social Change and is a member of the Human-Centred Computing research group in the School of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. She came to academic research after an international career as a journalist and her experience spans leading international media companies and as well as startups.

Research Interests

  • Journalism design
    Prototypes, processes, and theories that explore the forms and technological possibilities for journalism.
  • Design for social change
    New ways to think about and respond to social issues and wicked problems through creative communication, participation, and technology.
  • Design research and methods
    Developing and documenting custom research tools for specific people and situations.

Research Impacts

Winner, Walkley Grant for Journalism Innovation, 2014

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Queensland
  • Graduate Diploma of Digital Media Management, Birkbeck University of London
  • Bachelor of Journalism, Queensland University of Technology

Publications

View all Publications

Grants

View all Grants

Supervision

View all Supervision

Available Projects

  • Proposals welcome

    I am interested in supervising projects in these areas:

    • Journalism Design: exploring the intersection of technology and public interest storytelling;
    • Design for social change: participatory and co-design projects for people and communities.

View all Available Projects

Publications

Featured Publications

Book

Book Chapter

  • Prototyping interaction: designing technology for communication

    Doherty, Skye and Viller, Stephen (2020). Prototyping interaction: designing technology for communication. Reimagining communication: experience. (pp. 80-96) edited by Michael Filimowicz and Veronika Tzankova. New York, NY, United States: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781351015356-5

Journal Article

Conference Publication

  • Vim: a tangible energy story

    Doherty, Skye, Snow, Stephen, Jennings, Kathleen, Rose, Ben, Matthews, Ben and Viller, Stephen (2020). Vim: a tangible energy story. 13th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2020, Bournemouth, United Kingdom, 3-6 November 2020. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-62516-0_24

  • Exploring journalistic values through design: a student perspective

    Doherty, Skye and Worthy, Peter (2017). Exploring journalistic values through design: a student perspective. 29th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, Brisbane, Australia, 28 November-1 December 2017. New York, NY United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3152771.3156140

Other Outputs

  • The Futures of Forced Migration

    Doherty, Skye (2024). The Futures of Forced Migration. Brisbane, QLD, Australia: Wicked Thinking and The University of Queensland.

  • Fire Futures Concept Portfolio

    Doherty, Skye, Khan, Awais Hameed, Matthews, Ben and van de Fliert, Elske (2023). Fire Futures Concept Portfolio. Brisbane, QLD, Australia: The University of Queensland.

  • Fire Futures participatory design tools

    Doherty, Skye, Khan, Awais Hameed, Matthews, Ben and van de Fliert, Elske (2022). Fire Futures participatory design tools. Brisbane, QLD, Australia: The University of Queensland.

  • Healthy land and water: report card best practice

    Balch, Ross and Doherty, Skye (2022). Healthy land and water: report card best practice. Global Change Scholars Program Brisbane, QLD, Australia: The University of Queensland. doi: 10.14264/7da34d7

  • Vim

    Doherty, Skye , Rose, Ben , Jennings, Kathleen, Snow, Stephen , Matthews, Ben and Viller, Stephen (2020). Vim. Brisbane, Australia: University of Queensland.

  • Physical News Card Deck

    Skye Doherty, Kathleen Jennings, Ben Matthews and Stephen Viller (2019). Physical News Card Deck. Brisbane, Australia: University of Queensland.

  • JxD process

    Doherty, Skye, Worthy, Peter and Lloyd, David (2017). JxD process. Brisbane, QLD, Australia: University of Queensland.

  • Journalism Design: The NewsCube, Interactive Technologies and Practice

    Doherty, Skye (2017). Journalism Design: The NewsCube, Interactive Technologies and Practice. PhD Thesis, School of Information Technol and Elec Engineering, The University of Queensland. doi: 10.14264/uql.2017.402

  • NewsCube

    Doherty, Skye, Epifani, Andrea, Lloyd, David, Harrison, John and Viller, Stephen (2015). NewsCube. Samford, QLD, Australia: NewsCubed.

  • Hypertext and news stories

    Doherty, Skye (2013). Hypertext and news stories. ITEE Technical Report, 2013-03. School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland.

Grants (Administered at UQ)

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

  • Pro bono public relations: An investigation into the nature and extent of pro bono work in public relations in Australia as a mechanism for developing a more positive reputation, enhancing legitimacy and professionalism

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Honeyeater: A novel method of creative observation

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • An opportunity for death-positive design

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Rise of Meta- Technology and Media Industry in Bangladesh: A Study on Technological Adaptation and its Influences to Journalism Practices

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Design of a framework or digital tool to support schoolteachers in teaching reflective thinking skills

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Designing with History

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

Possible Research Projects

Note for students: The possible research projects listed on this page may not be comprehensive or up to date. Always feel free to contact the staff for more information, and also with your own research ideas.

  • Proposals welcome

    I am interested in supervising projects in these areas:

    • Journalism Design: exploring the intersection of technology and public interest storytelling;
    • Design for social change: participatory and co-design projects for people and communities.

This staff member is a UQ Expert for media in the following fields:

journalism, design, interaction design

They are happy to lend their expertise to your articles or broadcasts and share their research discoveries and insights with the community via media channels.

For additional assistance with story ideas, general advice and information or help with seeking further experts, please email the UQ Media Team or telephone (07) 3365 1120.

Links

ResearcherID: C-9199-2017

ORCID: 0000-0002-8189-2252

Scopus ID: 55627117900

Google Scholar ID: y0q8Yz4AAAAJ

Personal Profile: Link

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