Featured speakers
Keynote speaker
Professor Paul Harpur OAM
Professor Paul Harpur OAM is a leading international and comparative disability rights legal academic, current Australian Research Council Future Fellow, leader in higher education reforms, an Associate with the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, and duel Paralympian. He competed in the Sydney 2000 Paralympics and the Athens 2004 Paralympics and has the Paralympics Australia Pin #614. Professor Harpur is a TEDx speaker (“Universities as Disability Champions of Change”). He is chair of the University of Queensland Disability Inclusion Group, as well as holding international posts, including as an Associate with the Harvard Law School's Harvard Project on Disability, an International Distinguished Fellow, with the Burton Blatt Institute, Syracuse University, Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law, and is a former Fulbright Future Scholar. Professor Harpur is active in university-wide and sector-wide higher education change. Illustratively he has chairred the UQ Disability Inclusion Group since 2016 and sits on a range of university-wide committees. At the sector-wide level, during 2023 Dr Harpur served on the Ministerial Reference Group for the Universities Accord. He also serves on the Higher Education Standards Panel (HESP), which is a statutory body under Part 9 of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 (Cth). The HESP is charged to advise and make recommendations to the Minister and to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) on the Higher Education Standards Framework and to TEQSA on matters including TEQSA’ strategic objectives, corporate plan, performance against that plan, reform agenda, streamlining of activities and resourcing requirements and its regulatory approaches. He also serves on the Advisory Board for the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success, formerly the National Center for Student Equity in Higher Education. In April the Univertas 21 (U21) Senior Leaders Group adopted the U21 Framework for Equitable and Inclusive Global Engagement to guide EDI across the 30 university Network. This Framework as a committee, the U21 EDI Management Committee, to which Professor Harpur was appointed in 2025. His transformational work and service has been recognised with numerous diversity and inclusion, human resources and leadership citations and awards. In the 2024 Australia Day Honours, Professor Harpur was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia by the Governor General of Australia (OAM). The citation for his OAM is “for service to people with disability”. Professor Harpur has published 220+ publications. Professor Harpur's recent publications include 2 books with Cambridge University Press:
- Discrimination, Copyright and Equality: Opening the E-Book for the Print Disabled (2017)
- Ableism at work: disablement and hierarchies of impairments (2019)
Featured speakers
Dr Belinda Johnston
Dr Belinda Johnston is an Associate Director, Accessibility and Inclusion at the University of Melbourne. Belinda is a skilled public policy professional with experience across a range of social policy portfolios in Victorian Government central and line agencies as well as in the university and TAFE sector.
Professor Andrew Perfors
Professor Andrew Perfors is the Director of the Complex Human Data Hub in the School of Psychological Sciences as well as the Academic Lead for LGBTIQA+ Inclusion at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on understanding how people learn from and share information with each other, and how that learning changes the information environment itself. He is also a passionate teacher whose approach to education centres around the importance of establishing a sense of belonging and safety for everyone.
Dr Jessica Riordan
Dr. Jessica Riordan (nee Johnston) is an early career researcher with a passion for conducting neurodiversity-affirming research, translating research into practice, and inspiring positive societal change through community-led advocacy and education. Drawing on her research background in developmental psychology and lived experience of neurodivergence, Jessica co-founded the University of Melbourne Neurodiversity Project in 2023 and is currently serving as the Project Leader for Staff and Student Wellbeing.
Associate Professor Sally Treloyn
Dr Sally Treloyn is Associate Professor in Ethnomusicology and Intercultural Research in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music. At the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, Sally plays a strategic and supportive role in the Indigenous research and research training, teaching and learning, and community engagement. Sally is an active researcher in music sustainability and archives and access, with a specialism in Indigenous song in the Kimberley and Pilbara regions. They have led multiple Australian Research Council Linkage and Discovery Projects and was the recipient of a Future Fellowship between 2016 - 2021, conducting research with community organisations and artists in multiple sites in Australia, Canada, South Africa, and Uganda.