Kate Swanson is a member of UQ’s Graduate School Executive Team. Her role provides leadership around the development and delivery of Higher Degree by Research candidate development. Kate is a strong advocate for Higher Degree by Researcher (HDR) development and the links to industry that can provide both for research outcomes, and candidate growth. Her passion centres around research management, specifically building an awareness of the role HDR candidates play in industry engaged research and understanding the new complexities that can bring in terms of navigating sanctions, foreign interference, and added regulatory frameworks. Kate’s approach focuses on navigating new legislation and policy to facilitate research partnerships
and collaborations.

Kate spearheaded UQ’s shift to engage HDRs strongly with research‐end‐users by implementing one of the first non‐cognate HDR placement programs in Australia. She was also a recipient of the Australian Government Department of Education and Training award for Programs that Enhance Learning as part of the Australian Awards for University Teaching (2016) for her work leading the team that manages the internationally recognised Three Minute Thesis competition, a science communication program for HDR candidates. Kate has presented on HDR development at numerous conferences and seminar series and most recently was on the organising committee for the 2020 ARMS Virtual event – Never Waste a Crisis.

Kate Swanson actively supports researchers through training programs, facilitating industry contracts and philanthropic donations to support research, HDR placements and mentoring programs, and leads multiple teams that support researchers across The University of Queensland. Her experience in research management spans managing ethics applications and training program role outs, contract management, grant applications, and broad involvement in HDR administration and development. This, combined with her 17 years’ experience in operational management, and strategy development roles means she is well placed to translate her knowledge to the role of a General Board Member and provide and provide insightful and strategic support to
the Australian Research Management Society.