Associate Professor Paul Williams | UniSC | University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia

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Associate Professor Paul Williams

PhD (Creative Writing) Wisconsin, MA (English) Natal, BA(Hons) (English) Natal

  • Associate Professor in Creative Writing
  • Discipline Lead, Creative Industries
  • School of Business and Creative Industries
Email
Telephone
+61 7 5456 5413
Office location
SD K.1.07A
Campus
Sunshine Coast
Paul Williams

 

Professional Memberships 

  • NAWE (National Association of Writers in Education) UK
  • AAWP (Australasian Association of Writing Programs) AU
  • AWP (Association of Writing Programs) USA

Awards/Fellowships

  • Advance Award: Advancing the Student Experience, 2014, University of the Sunshine Coast
  • Carnovski African Studies Scholarship, 1989, University of the Witwatersrand
  • The Dean's Humanities Award, 1994, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
  • Winner — Fiction Young Adult Novel section, 2001, Zimbabwe International Book Fair
  • TRIO teaching Award 2003, Blue Mountain Community College, Oregon
  • Book of the Year — 2008, The Witness (South Africa)

Professional Social Media

* This is an external website and USC is not responsible for the content.

Current Research Projects

Project Name 

Project Description 

Youth Engaged in Sustainability (YES) research project

‘Australian Authors and their Marketing Knowledge’. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sExfFUBxkhfie_AdiXD4Ft5V5od5Uwu0/view; (HERDC Funding $120,000)

South African National Parks

Exploring immersive tourism experiences: pro-environmental intent and eco-storytelling, 2023-4.

LyS Research Group (Spain)

‘A Confederacy of LLMs: Evaluation of Language Models on Creative Writing’, 2023-2024.

ITRC Research theme 2

Wandiny Poetry Project, 2022-24.

​Country as home: Indigenous Poetry Creative Gathering 

​An exploration of what Country as home means to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander poets and Elders and to all Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants through the vehicle of poetry.

​‘Our stories – our voice’ - Australian International Student Narratives 

​A showcase of the unique voices and stories and creative writing styles of USC students who speak English as an additional language.

Improving Literacy through Narrative and Creative Writing 

An exploration of the impact of creative writing pedagogical intervention in three year 9 classrooms.

Research Grants and Commissions

Grant / project name 

Investigators 

Funding body and A$ Value  

Year (S) 

Focus 

​Australian Edition of the Chicago Quarterly Review  

​Dr Paul Williams 

​Copyright Agency $15,000 

​2019 

​The Australian Edition of the ChicagoQuarterlyReview will include an inclusive variety of Australian writers (multicultural, young/ old, emerging and established, LGBTIQA+, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, Manus Island and other refugees) in order to showcase the best of Australian literary talent to an international platform.

​ 

Improving Literacy through Narrative and Creative Writing 

 

Dr Shelley Davidow, Dr Paul Williams, Dr Michael Carey  

Steiner Education Australia (SEA) $11,500 

2019 

An exploration of the impact of creative writing pedagogical intervention in three year 9 classrooms.

Potential Research Projects for HDR & Honours Students

  • Postmodern fiction
  • The novel / historiographic metafiction
  • Creative non-fiction, particularly in relation to memoir/autobiography
  • Post-colonial world literature
  • Writing for children and young adults
  • Fictocriticism
  • Creative Writing studies

Supervision of Honours and Higher Degree by Research candidates

  • Please see Paul's HDR completions via his UniSC Research Bank link

Research areas

  • Creative Writing research methodologies
  • Creative Writing performative pedagogies
  • NTRO Postcolonial literary fiction
  • NTRO Short Stories
  • NTRO Crime fiction
  • NTRO Memoir
  • Creative Writing postcolonial children’s literature
  • Creative Writing autobiography

Teaching areas

  • Creative Writing — narrative, poetic and performative craft; children’s/ young adult literature
  • Literary Studies
  • The novel: experimental fiction
  • Autobiography/memoir

Dr Paul Williams is a creative writer based in the USC School of Communications and Creative Industries. His research interests encompass areas such as post colonialism and postmodernism in fiction; African literature; autobiographic / historiographic metafiction and narrative constructions of the ‘self’ and ‘other’; children’s and young adult fiction; and creative writing as a transcultural activity.

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