Section: Overview
Overview
Key publications
Research funding
Supervising & teaching
Career

Key details

Areas of expertise

  • Literacy
  • Critical pedagogy
  • Gender and sexuality
  • Narrative approaches in qualitative Inquiry
  • Qualitative and post-qualitative research

Available to supervise research students

Available for media queries

About Mark Vicars

Following 24 years of working in education in several countries in Primary, Secondary, Post-16 contexts with 15 of those in higher education, Mark has extensive international, multi-sector experience of teaching and learning in Australia and Asia.

Mark has generated international opportunities for collaborative partnerships focused on the teaching/research nexus. He has developed research affiliations and education partnerships internationally to deliver educational workplace training and research.

Mark’s philosophy of praxis is underpinned by principles of social justice. His research draws upon critical poststructuralist/post colonial and queer theory to interrogate the discourses and pedagogies of social and educational inclusion in and across international educational systems.

Mark's multidisciplinary approach focuses on students’ cultural identities as learners and how shifting identity practices in educational domains coalesce around the intersections of class, race, gender and sexuality.

His recent research has been focused on developing innovative teaching and learning partnerships in international contexts. This on-going Australian government funded research is developing teacher education literacy curricula, professional learning networks and intercultural learning communities between schools and universities in Australia and Thailand.

Qualifications

  • PhD, University of Sheffield, UK
  • MA, University of Sheffield, UK
  • MA, University of Sheffield, UK
  • MEd, University of Sheffield, UK
  • BA (Hons)University of Leicester, UK

Key publications

Year Citation
2024 Vicars, M., Muscat, A., Seely, Fint., Cacciattolo, M., Tartakover, S., Sesta, J., Mahon, L., Iorio, J., & Hamm, C. (Eds.). (240224). Rethinking literacy paradigms and practices for the 21st Century in Vicars, M (Ed) Literacy in Australia: pedagogies for engagement 4TH edition (4th). Australia: Wiley.

Year Citation
2025 Arantes, J., & Vicars, M. (251130). AI Against I: Crisis, Continuity and Change In Vicars, M. (Ed.) (pp. 1-12). TBC: TBC.
2024 Arantes, J., Vicars, M., & Muscat, A. (241231). Porous Texts: Re/searching palimpsest play with/in the methodological affordances of gaming for re/searching gender and sexuality in children s worlds. In Huuki, T. ;. (Ed.) (pp. 1-12). Oulo: Routledge.
2024 Arantes, J., Vicars, M., Giakoumakis, E., & Arantes, J. (241231). Investigating, Mastering or Becoming enslaved in Doctoral Supervision In Cacciattolo, M. ;. (Ed.) (pp. 1-12). Australia: Brill.
2024 Vicars, M., & Arantes, J. (241101). Invisible Data: Exploring the impact of missing LGBTQI+ data in educational algorithmic decision-making (DIPR (2022)) (pp. 1-12). DIPR: DIPR.
2024 Vicars, M., & Arantes, J. (240312). Girls will be boys and boys will be girls. It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world In Mitra, B. ;. (Ed.) (pp. 21-40). New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
2024 Vicars, M., Doungphummes, N., & Phanthaphoommee, N. (240214). Disrupting the simulacrum of normalcy: queer on line activism and protest in Thailand In Pain, P. (Ed.) (pp. 215-234). New York: Taylor & Francis.

Year Citation
2024 Arantes, J., & Vicars, M. (241231). Queering Deepfakes. Encyclopedia of Queer Studies, (1-1).
2024 Vicars, M., & Arantes, J. (240325). Always On Standby: Reshaping Higher Education by acknowledging the psychosocial risk of our post digital presence in online digital labor. Higher Education Research & Development, Special Issue on The Reshaping of Higher Education: Technological impacts, pedagogical change, and future projections, (603-619).

doi: 10.1080/07294360.2023.2280209

2024 Vicars, M. (240314). Narrating Trans disciplinarity: Kinship, Care, Love and Loss in the entangled more than human-animal relations. Societas, Expert Studies in Social Wellbeing Vol 3, (21-32).

Research funding for the past 5 years

Funding details for this researcher are currently unavailable.

Supervision of research students at VU

Available to supervise research students

Available for media queries

Currently supervised research students at VU

No. of students Study level Role
1 PhD Associate supervisor
5 PhD Principal supervisor
1 PhD Integrated Associate supervisor
3 PhD Integrated Principal supervisor

Currently supervised research students at VU

Students & level Role
PhD (1) Associate supervisor
PhD (5) Principal supervisor
PhD Integrated (1) Associate supervisor
PhD Integrated (3) Principal supervisor

Completed supervision of research students at VU

No. of students Study level Role
9 PhD Principal supervisor
1 PhD Associate supervisor
1 PhD by Publication Principal supervisor
1 Doctor of Education Associate supervisor
1 Masters by Research Associate supervisor
1 PhD by Creative Work Principal supervisor
1 PhD Integrated Principal supervisor
1 Master of Research Principal supervisor

Completed supervision of research students at VU

Students & level Role
PhD (9) Principal supervisor
PhD (1) Associate supervisor
PhD by Publication (1) Principal supervisor
Doctor of Education (1) Associate supervisor
Masters by Research (1) Associate supervisor
PhD by Creative Work (1) Principal supervisor
PhD Integrated (1) Principal supervisor
Master of Research (1) Principal supervisor

Teaching activities & experience

Mark is the Course Chair of the Master Teaching Primary and is the Unit Chair for Education Research Design and Methodology and the Literacy units in the Master of Teaching Primary.

He has previously been the Course Coordinator of the EdD, Course Coordinator for the International MTESOL programme. He is also a research integrity officer for Victoria University.

He is also:

  • on the Editorial Board for The SAGE Handbook of Critical Pedagogies
  • Lead Editor Qualitative Research Journal
  • Co- convener Qualitative Research Methodologies SIG, Australian Association for Research in Education
  • Series Editor of the Praxis of English Language, Brill/Sense, Teaching
  • Editorial Board member, International Perspectives on Adolescence and Education Series. Springer Publishers
  • Editorial Advisory Board member, Gaming Ecologies and Pedagogies Series
  • International Editorial Board member, International Journal of Research and Method in Education
  • International Editorial Board, Research in the Theory and Practice of Education
  • Editorial Board member Global Studies of Childhood Journal, Editorial Boardmember Taboo.

Key academic roles

Dates Role Department / Organisation
Jan 2018 - Present
Course Chair Master of Teaching Primary
Victoria University
Dates Role & Department/Organisation
Jan 2018 -
Present
Course Chair Master of Teaching Primary
Victoria University

Key industry, community & government roles

Dates Role Department/Organisation
Mar 2016 - Mar 2017
President
International Association of Qualitative Research.
Dates Role & Department/Organisation
Mar 2016 - Mar 2017
President
International Association of Qualitative Research.

Awards

Year Award
2018

Vice Chancellor Citation for Excellence in Research and Research Training (Supervision) - Victoria University

2010

Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, Excellence in Teaching for pedagogical approaches that motivate, inspire and support socially disadvantaged and culturally diverse students to overcome ba - ALTC

Keynote and invited speeches

Year Title/Description
2015

What a difference a gay makes: homonormativity, inclusion and LGBTQ youth

University of Western Scotland, UK, Critical Encounters Symposium

2015

Don’t look now: situated ethics and the participatory gaze.

Northumbria University, UK. Rethinking Ethics Symposium.

2015

Putting the queer/in as a methodological project; in Other words: critical ontology and dialectical knowing in post qualitative research.

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Departament de Psicologia Social, Alumna. Queering Methodology Conference

2013

ReSearching Inclusion

University of Malta, October 2013, Social Change and Inclusion Conference

2012

Call it Queer!, Talkin’ Bout Their Generation’

Empowered youth in an Era of Chaos and Indecision Conference, University of Calgary, Canada.

2011

Queering Criticality

1The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy Congress ,University of Athens, Korinthos.

2010

Implementing Pedagogical approaches that motivate, inspire and support socially disadvantaged and culturally diverse students to overcome barriers to learning and to experience and attain suc

The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy Congress ,University of Barcelona, and The University of Granada.

2009

Teachers’ Requirements and Learners’ Needs: Can Action Research Help Language Teachers Overcome This Conundrum?

KAPEE International Conference . The National University of Education, Busan, Korea.

Show more invited keynote speeches

Professional memberships

  • Academic Member, PETTA
  • Academic Member, AERA
  • Academic Member, AREA