Associate Professor Tony Moore is Head, Communications and Media Studies in the School of Media, Film and Journalism. He is Lead Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council funded cultural industries project Fringe to Famous: Australian Culture as an Innovation System, and now the ARC digital humanities Linkage Project Conviction Politics: the Convict History of Australian Democracy. Tony’s top 3 publications the three scholarly books Dancing with Empty Pockets: Australia’s Bohemians Since 1860 (2012), Death or Liberty: Rebels and Radicals Transported to Australia (2010) and The Barry McKenzie Movies: Australian Screen classics series (2005). Following careers as a book publisher and documentary maker at ABC Television, Associate Professor Moore joined Monash in 2009, where he has served as Director, National Centre for Australian Studies: Director, Master of Communications and Media and Deputy Research Director of the School of Media, Film and Journalism (Engagement and Impact). Tony completed his doctorate in Australian cultural history at the University of Sydney, and writes regularly on communications, history and politics in the press and scholarly publications. Through his journalism and publishing projects Tony maintains close industry links with professionals working in the media and policy sectors, which are drawn upon to enhance high impact media and public facing outputs such as documentaries, exhibitions and submissions drawn from his research and to enhance critical practice and work integrated learning within the 4 degrees taught by the Communications and Media Studies section. Tony has taught at the University of NSW and the University of Sydney, where he was awarded a doctorate for his thesis on Australia’s Bohemian Tradition in 2008. He believes that postgraduate coursework in communications should equip students with the skills and knowledge to think critically and creatively throughout their professional careers.

Tony's academic career at Monash is interdisciplinary, embracing research, teaching and leadership at the juncture of Australian cultural history with Media and Cultural Studies, and emerging fields of Cultural Economy and Digital Humanities.  His research interests include cinema, independent media and creative industries, public broadcasting, popular music, radical political movements and their use of media, youth subcultures and artistic bohemia. Tony's doctoral thesis and the monograph Dancing with Empty Pockets examined Australia's bohemian tradition, a century-long history of creative iconoclasts spanning Marcus Clarke to Nick Cave, Dulcie Deamer to Germaine Greer. Tony wrote and directed a documentary iteration, Bohemian Rhapsody, for ABC Television and the book led to State Library Victoria’s major exhibition ‘Bohemian Melbourne’, which he co-curated.  In 2007 Tony was awarded the NSW History Fellowship to research and write Death or Liberty, a history of political prisoners transported to the Australian colonies in the convict era, to be published in 2010 and subsequently adapted screen documentary of the same name, brodcast in Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom and co-produced by the ABC, Roar Film and Tile Films. Tony’s first book, The Barry McKenzie Movies, analysed Australian comedy and the cultural significance of the 'Ocker' cinema genre of the 1970s. Tony has chapters in books published by Routledge, Brill, New South Press, Pluto Press and Black Ink, and scholarly articles have been published in Continuum, Journal of Australian Studies, History Australia and Meanjin. His forthcoming co-authored monograph, Fringe to Famous, drawn from the ARC project of the same name, is to be published by Bloomsbury in 2020.

Tony has served on the boards of the ABC’s National Advisory Council, the Australian Society of Authors, The Fabian Society, Evatt Foundation and  has been an Honorary  Creative Fellow at the State Library Victoria and is  currently a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development and a member of the selection panel for the State Library’s Creative Fellowships. Tony is interviewed frequently in the media and has been an expert interviewee on the major documentaries Brilliant Creatures (BBC/ABC), Mambo: Life Irritates Art, and the Radio National series Class Act. Tony has written features and opinion pieces over may decades for  the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, Australian Literary Review,  Australian Financial Review, ABC online and The Conversation and has been a regular  panellist on ABC’s The Drum and Critical Mass. Tony's professional engagement with the media extends back to the mid 1980s when he was NSW community representative on the ABC National Advisory Council. In nine years as an ABC program-maker he worked on seminal feature length documentaries as a researcher, writer, associate producer and later a producer/director. His documentary credits include Nobody's Children, The Devil You Know, Lost In Space, So Help Me God and Bohemian Rhapsody. As a journalist producer in ABC Current Affairs Tony worked at Four Corners, 7.30 Report and Foreign Correspondent.

For over a decade from the late 1990s Tony was publisher for Pluto Press and Academic Commissioning Editor for Cambridge University Press, where he commissioned titles in the areas of political science, history, economics, cultural studies and media. He was especially committed to working with young emerging writers and postgraduates to get their research published, which has translated into his commitment to PhD, Masters and Honours supervision at masters. His supervisions have ranged from ‘Indy Music’, and Hip Hop cultural entrepreneurs, the impact of Punk, to Australian colonial history and literature, the ABC’s approach to classical music, and activist cultural politics in Asia.

Tony is committed to channelling innovative research and theory through a variety of media to challenge orthodox thinking, stimulate creative public debate, and provide evidence for policy reform. This notion of 'ideas entrepreneurship' connects his careers in academia, broadcasting, journalism and publishing. As a cultural and media historian he believes knowledge of our cultural traditions enables critical engagement with present problems and opportunities.