Originally from Brazil, Dr Lucas Santos started his career as a language educator teaching English as an additional language for over ten years in language schools. He moved to Australia in 2012 to complete his PhD in Education focusing on how young Brazilians enact different identities in digital practices, and the culturally and socially shaped aspirations of young people in engaging in global and local issues.

In Australia, Dr Santos taught English for academic purposes for diverse cohorts of international students, and led the Academic English university wide programs at Monash University from 2017 to 2020. A central focus of Dr Santos teaching and research career has been on leveraging how educators can enable meaningful learning that considers the diverse identities’ learners bring to classes.

Since 2020, Dr Santos has been a lecturer at the Monash Intercultural Lab  where he focuses on exploring how individuals develop intercultural capabilities that allow them to navigate diversity in personal and professional contexts. His main interests focus on how global issues, such as racism, diversity, and belonging, can be addressed through intercultural studies, with particular emphasis on sporting cultures and diverse workplaces.

Dr Santos’ research interests are broadly in the field of intercultural studies. His research focuses on how difference is socially constructed and enacted across institutional, organisational, and community contexts. His current research interests explore:

• Sporting cultures and diversity

Dr Santos is currently investigating racism within the Australian Football League (AFL), with a particular emphasis on how fractures and tensions across in the wider Australian society reverberate through sports. He is also interested in the changing demographic shifts in cricket, driven by global migration patterns, and how it contests ‘sanctioned’ narratives of what sporting codes mean to different social groups.

• The scholarship of teaching and learning, interculturality and student voices

As a passionate educator, Dr Santos’ is interested in how interculturality can enable educators to rethink pedagogical practices in higher education, and enable students’ diverse voices to shape meaningful learning experiences. Focusing on innovations in teaching learning, such as virtual exchanges, intercultural teamwork and collaboration, Dr Santos explores the changing nature of the scholarship of teaching learning ensuring it addresses the diversity of students’ identities and needs.

• Professional learning, diverse workplaces and intercultural capabilities

Dr Santos is interested in exploring the conditions that enable inclusive workplaces and leadership practices, with a strong emphasis on the intercultural capabilities that employees, leaders, and graduates need to develop to enable them to address key global challenges that shape the future of work and communities of which they are part. His research focuses on sustainable professional learning, that supports organisational change and individuals’ sense of belonging, in the context of superdiverse communities.

I contribute to the teaching of the Monash Intercultural Lab's postgraduate units on intercultural competence.

APG5470 - Managing Multicultural Teams

APG5471 - Leadership in Intercultural Environments

These units, co-designed and co-coordinated with Dr Nadine Normand-Marconnet, are part of the Professional Enhancement Program allowing students to develop their intercultural capabilities for globalised and super-diverse workplace contexts.