Dr Vicki Ware

Dr Vicki-Ann Ware is one of the world's leading scholars on arts as global development and/or peacebuilding. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Master of International and Community Development and Master of Humanitarianism and Development courses at Deakin University. Vicki is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Universitas Indonesia, where she is collaborating on research into the protective role of traditional arts in countering and preventing hateful & violent extremism.

Multiple current research projects explore arts as a space for CD and peacebuilding, primarily in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Indonesia, along with the mechanisms by which arts can contribute to significant social change at the grassroots level. She is also colalborating with colleagues in the US and Chile on exploring the efficacy of poetry as self-therapy in conflict-affected spaces, and bringing together English- and Spanish-languate literatures to better understand the impacts of arts and cultural participation on marginalised communities globally.

She is currently lead editor on two forthcoming Routledge volumes (due out late-2024):

1. The Routledge Handbook of Arts and Global Development.
2. Performing Knowledge: utilising arts-based research in development.

Vicki has a wealth of practical experience in the field of arts-based CD, having worked across multiple sites in SE Asia since the mid-1990s. She has also worked in policy and research across all three levels of government in Australia, as well as in private policy consultancy.

Work experience:

• Community development in Australia – settlement of newly-arrived refugees
• Community development in Southeast Asia:

               - 8.5 years living/working in Thailand;

               - over 20 years contact and work in Myanmar;

               - speaks Thai fluently, and some Burmese

•  Social planning, policy and policy research: almost a decade working at all levels of government in Australia, as well as in policy research consultancy. Areas of specialist knowledge:

              - Linkages between urban planning and community development

              - Housing and homelessness policy

              - Indigenous policy