Committee of Management

Matt Abud - President

Matt Abud has worked in the field of media development in various countries in Asia for the past decade, including EastTimor, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka; employers have included the UN, Radio 68H, Internews and others. His personal focus has been on media access for marginalised or less affluent communities, which has led his work to emphasise especially radio, with other media platforms added depending on context. More recently he has been worked on media communications projects in disaster settings, including in Haiti in early 2010, and Pakistan for the 2009 conflict, and the 2010 floods. He lives in Melbourne, where he is completing his studies in media, conflict, and development.

Rachel Maher- Vice President

Rachel Maher has worked on many media production and training projects with Australian Indigenous and migrant communities and young people. She studied documentary film and television at the Victorian College of the Arts and has produced video, radio and written content for broadcast and publication on a range of platforms. Rachel broadcasts regularly on Australian community radio as part of the production team of 3CR's environmental justice program, Earth Matters. She has freelanced as a producer for Radio New Internationalist, ABC Radio National, SBS - Special Broadcasting Service and the Pacifica Network in the USA and recently worked at newmatilda.com. Rachel currently works with Internews in Afghanistan.

Dr Ellie Rennie

Ellie Rennie is a researcher and writer, based at Swinburne University’s Institute for Social Research in Melbourne. In the mid-nineties she worked on the activist video program Access News (SKA TV), initially as a trainee editor and video operator. It soon became clear to everyone that video production was not Ellie’s strong point, forcing her onto the SKA TV committee and into the world of media advocacy. Ellie was Chairperson of SKA during 1998- 2000. She then left Melbourne to undertake a PhD in Brisbane (QUT), which resulted in her first book Community Media: A Global Introduction (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

Ellie has worked as a researcher and policy advisor for numerous community media organisations, including the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, Goolarri Media, SYN Media and C31. She is Vice Chair of the Community Communication Section of the International Association of Media Communication Research and has convened two OURMedia/Nuestros Medios conferences. Her book Life of SYN: A Story of the Digital Generation is due for publication in 2010 (Monash University Publishing). She is currently writing a book on remote Indigenous media and continues to publish regular reviews for Metro Screen Magazine and occasional articles for Inside Story and Crikey. Ellie joined the EngageMedia Committee of Management in 2010.

Andrew Lowenthal – Secretary

Andrew has been working in the field of media and technology activism since 1998. He was a coordinator and editor in the Indymedia network for six years before co-founding EngageMedia in 2005. From 2006-08 he worked with the UK/India based Tactical Technology Collective as their participatory media project lead, editing the NGO-in-a-box series of free software packages and the more recent Message-in-a-box. He has organised or facilitated at training camps and events in Indonesia, Italy, Hungary, the UK, USA, Mexico, Brazil, the Netherlands, Thailand, Malaysia and India.

Professor Merlyna Lim

Merlyna Lim is a faculty member of the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes and the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University. Professor Lim completed her Ph.D. in September 2005 (cum laude), at the University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands with a dissertation on the Internet and political activism in Indonesia. Her teaching and research interests revolve around political and cultural implications of new media and information technologies, in relations to issues of globalization, democratization and (in)equity.

She is also the founder and the main sketch artist of the Sketch4Ed (Sketching for Education) a charitable organization supporting the education of marginalized children in Indonesia. Lim is also a blogger, writing in English, Indonesian and Sundanese. More about her see: http://merlyna.org