University of Tasmania, Australia

Ms Kellie Brandenburg

Postgraduate - Sociology PhD student

Contact Details

• UTAS Web Access Research Portal (WARP) - lists Kellie's funded projects and publication information.
• UTas ePrints - lists Kellie's publication information.
• Kellie's Blog

Teaching Responsibilities

Kellie lectures and tutors in sociology on a casual basis.  Most recently she has tutored in HGA206/306 Crime and Criminal Justice and guest lectured in HGA101 Sociology A.

Publications

• Brandenburg, K.  (2011) ‘Risk, parental autonomy and the epistemic divide: preimplantation genetic diagnosis in the Australian print news media, 1990-2007’, New Genetics and Society, 30(1):115-131. 
• Brandenburg, K.  (2007) ‘A new sociological imperative: Towards engaging with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis’, Health Sociology Review, 16(1):79-88. 

Research Areas

• Ethical, legal and social implications of the ‘new’ human genetics;
• The intersection between technology and contemporary families;
• Children in ‘out of home care’ in Australia;
• ‘Grey nomads’, ageing and technology.

Research Interests

Kellie’s PhD thesis is Grey Nomads in Australia:  Technologies of Mobility and the Transformation of Ageing.  Kellie is using ethnographic research to investigate how Grey Nomads experience ageing in the context of technology and mobility.  Drawing on the ‘mobilities turn’, Kellie explores four key questions about Grey Nomads:

• How can we understand Grey Nomadism as a process of identity formation in the context of modernity?
• How do Grey Nomads engage with technological objects and processes?
• To what extent do Grey Nomads connect to a globalised world?
• How are social structures constitutive of Grey Nomadism?

Kellie argues that the Grey Nomads represent an Antipodean form of cosmopolitanism which is translocal and supranational in character and which challenges the Eurocentric focus of much of the extant scholarship of cosmopolitanism.

Kellie’s 2007 Honours thesis examined the representation of preimplantation genetic diagnosis in the Australian print news media and how ideas about this technology have been informed by contemporary social concepts such as risk, responsibility and autonomy.   Her thesis is  Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis in the Australian Print News Media, 1990 – 2007.   Kellie continues to research and publish in this area.  She has worked as a researcher with the Centre for Law and Genetics (UTAS School of Law) since 2007.