The Contributors

K’gari Field Trip Contributors

  • Leah Barclay is a sound artist, designer and researcher who works at the intersection of art, science and technology. Leah's research and creative work over the last decade has investigated innovative approaches to recording and disseminating the soundscapes of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems to inform conservation, scientific research and public engagement. Her work explores ways we can use creativity, new technologies and emerging science to reconnect communities to the environment and inspire climate action.

    Leah has been the recipient of numerous awards and her work has been commissioned, performed and exhibited to wide acclaim internationally by organisations including the Smithsonian Museum, UNESCO, Ear to the Earth, Streaming Museum, Al Gore’s Climate Reality and the IUCN. Leah’s augmented reality sound installations have been presented across the world from Times Square in New York City to the Eiffel Tower in Paris for COP21.

    Leah leads several research projects including Biosphere Soundscapes and River Listening that focus on advancing the field of ecoacoustics. The design of these interdisciplinary projects are responsive to the needs of collaborating communities and involve the development of new technologies including remote sensing devices for the rainforest canopy and hydrophone recording arrays in aquatic ecosystems. Leah is the Discipline Lead of Design at the University of the Sunshine Coast where she is also co-leading the Creative Ecologies Research Cluster.

  • Dr Toby Gifford is a designer, creative coder, and interdisciplinary media arts practitioner, with a particular interest in virtual/augmented reality and immersive installation. He has worked across industry and academia at the intersection of art and technology, with extensive professional experience in software programming and systems design. His research spans a broad range of areas including: application of artificial intelligence to the creative industries; environmental sensing for ecosystem health monitoring; and modelling and data visualisation to aid design.

  • Megan Williams is a curator and writer with twenty years of experience in leadership, programming and management roles across the university art museum sector. Since 2016, she has been the Manager of UniSC Art Gallery. In 2020, Megan led a major redevelopment of UniSC Art Gallery that positioned the Gallery as the leading public gallery in the Sunshine Coast region. Before joining UniSC, she worked at QUT in a range of curatorial and programming roles across QUT Art Museum, the William Robinson Gallery, the Creative Industries Precinct and The Cube.

    As a researcher, Megan has a portfolio of non-traditional research outputs (NTROs) realised as major exhibitions and accompanying publications that have attracted nationally competitive funding and highly visible public outcomes.

  • Tricia King is a creative arts health researcher specialising in participatory visual methodologies to support older adults' well-being. Using techniques like photo voice and collaborative photography, her work challenges visual ageism and promotes social connection.

    She founded the Ageing Well Creative Lab, a fortnightly program introducing older adults to technologies like AR, photo editing, and drone photography. She is a founding member of UniSC's Creative Ecologies Research Cluster and a theme leader in the Healthy Ageing Research Cluster, exploring place-based, embodied approaches to ecological empathy and social connectedness.

    Tricia convenes the Australian Association of Gerontology's Creativity, Art, and Design Special Interest Group, leads its Student and Early Career Researcher Communications Working Group, and is an Associate Editor of the Arts & Health Journal and founding editorial member of the Journal of Creative Research Methods.

  • Michael Cook uses the camera as a "third eye," bridging European and Indigenous worlds. His meticulously crafted, often playful photographs create imaginary spaces of reversed roles and rewritten histories, probing Australia's colonial history with empathy rather than judgment.

    Of the Bidjara people of south-west Queensland, Cook was adopted at birth into a non-Indigenous family in Hervey Bay, raised by an activist mother who embraced his Aboriginality. He has lived on the Sunshine Coast for over 30 years, leaving a career as a commercial photographer to become an artist in 2009 to reconnect with his heritage.

    His work is held in all major Australian collections and internationally, including the British Museum, Fondation Opale, and LA County Museum of Art. In 2025, he received an Australian World Heritage Residency through Creative Australia to develop a new project on K'gari.