America-based CQUniversity graduate Don Winiecki is taking a novel approach to make his social science research accessible to a wider range of audiences.

"I'm working toward communicating my research through visual art - primarily painting and drawing - with the aim of producing work which is accessible to audiences different from those who would usually read the type of journal article or book which I have produced in the past," he says.

Professor Don Winiecki

"These examples [pictured below*] attempt to portray the way modern, technocentric means of making us visible actually have the effect of dividing ourselves into narrower and narrower slices of what we may otherwise `know' ourselves to be.  In the process, what we are `officially' known to be by those who control the systems becomes only a fraction of what we actually `are'."

Now working as a Full Professor in the College of Engineering at Boise State University in Idaho, Don says his professional life has developed since he graduated with a PhD from what was then known as the School of Psychology and Sociology at CQUniversity in 2006.

"Before I commenced studies toward the PhD at CQUniversity, I had already earned a doctor of education degree (EdD) from Texas Tech University in the U.S. and had been awarded tenure and the rank of Associate Professor in my job. In the year following graduation from CQUni I edited my dissertation on 'subjects and subjectivity in call centres' into a monograph* and have been successful in writing up research based on my dissertation into a number of publications in scholarly journals which focus on social science, business and more technical subjects - some in top-ranked journals.  I have also conducted and published research on the experience of expert witnesses in court proceedings in the USA and on the philosophy and use of ethnographic methods in applied social science." 

LINK for a larger image. (c) 2011 Don Winiecki

"I have also become active in the Pacific Sociological Association (PSA) - a regional subset of the American Sociological Association.  I regularly organise several sessions at the annual conference each April and sit on the PSA Committee for Clinical and Applied Sociology.  I also serve as a reviewer of manuscripts for five international journals in social science."

"My current research continues in my studies of subjectivity and the construction of subjects through technical forms of observation and measurement in modern society (though the technical nature of this is often largely superficial!).  However, I currently focus more on the philosophical side of social science, and my research uses existing data and literature rather than focusing on the collection of new data in field studies."

Don says he has not visited CQUniversity since graduation but keeps his eye on the job postings website to look for opportunities to teach in Central Queensland.

"My wife and I travel to Korea every few years to visit her family and we look forward to the prospect of more travel outside the U.S."

LINK for a larger image. (c) 2011 Don Winiecki
LINK for a larger image. (c) 2011 Don Winiecki

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* Winiecki, D. 2006. Discipline and Governmentality at Work: Making the Subject and Subjectivity in Modern Tertiary Labour. London: Free Association Books.

Don can be contacted via dwiniecki@boisestate.edu if anyone is interested in further details.