Birut has extensive experience lecturing in subjects related to language, art, film, academic writing and culture. Her passion is for interdisciplinary research as well as supporting the learning process at undergraduate and post-graduate levels.
In 2010 she completed a PhD entitled Ethno-eco dialogue: Filmmaking for Sustainability, which provided an opportunity to bring together interests in creative practice (PhD), applied linguistics (Graduate Diploma) and environmental education (Master’s).
In 2016 she was part of the team that won the CDU Vice-Chancellor’s Award for outstanding contributions to student learning for work with the Growing our Own program. Previous accolades include a national award recognising contributions in social education, and the CSIRO Scinema Film Awards.
Birut is available to supervise research students who are interested in topics such as environmental education, arts and sustainability, cross-cultural creative collaborations, transformative arts, creative science communication.
Birut has successfully supervised research students across various interest areas to complete their post-graduate studies. These include PhD topics such as:
- Underwater basket-weaving: Contemporary fibre art in North Australia with an environmental perspective (de Groot, A. 2018);
- Environmental art: Aesthetics, activism and transformation (Dahlsen, J. 2017);
- Building bridges and connecting culture: Cross-cultural creative collaboration and reciprocal relationships on Tiwi Islands (Anderson, S. 2016);
- Painting trajectories: transliterating traces of the travel experience through photo-based painting (Moller, S. 2016) and
- Portraits of country: a plein air painter in Arrernte country (Taylor, J. 2015)