Resume

Born in the UK, Robin has always had a great love for recording the world around him with a camera. After finishing high school, he studied fine art in Leamington Spa for a year before moving to Nottingham Trent University where he attained a degree in Creative Photography. He then moved to London where he worked as a cameraman in the advertising industry for several years, before emigrating to Australia in 1985.

Since arriving in Sydney, Robin has worked in a range of different photographic areas, initially as large format black-and-white printer, and then as a cameraman in the audio-visual business, before becoming a freelance photographer specialising in wedding photography.

In the nineties, Robin began working as a freelance photojournalist for several publications in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the UK. This led to a full-time position as editor of Commercial Photography Magazine and later, Australian Photography magazine, a position he held for five years.

In 1997, Robin founded the first digital photography publication in the world, Digital Photography and Design magazine. This was critically acclaimed and enjoyed a rising circulation for many years. During this period, he also wrote and published several technical books for Focal Press and Octopus Press, lectured at seminars in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as in Seattle and Chicago, and ran highly successful photographic workshops in Dubai for seven years. As a publisher, Robin was lucky enough to interview some of the biggest names in photography – Elliott Erwitt, David Doubilet, Joe McNally, Gregory Heisler, David Hobby, and even Don Burrows on one occasion.

After eight years as an editor Robin started his own publishing business, launching Australia’s best-selling specialist photo publication: Better Digital magazine. With this he aggressively pursued the goal of producing clear, well-illustrated information written in jargon-free English. He continued to develop this style two years later launching another specialist magazine, Better Photoshop Techniques and a one-off publication called Digital Photo Art, a project-based magazine that crossed the line between pure photography and image-based scrapbooking. Both magazines ran for more than ten years, but as distribution and paper costs spiralled, and access to free information on the Internet exploded, he moved into teaching, working for two US-based online learning specialists, and locally at several adult education centres as well as the Centre for Continuing Education in Sydney.

Currently Robin contributes to specialist sites such as www.photzy.com, writes training courses for clients such as Open Colleges and runs specialist small group photographic tours to photo-centric locations such as South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Oman, Ethiopia, Japan, Iceland, Bali, Sri Lanka, Madagascar and Cuba. When not travelling he run photo workshops, teaches digital photography, photo bookmaking, video and post-production classes online, as well as in face-to-face classes locally.

Robin’s work can be viewed online at Robin Nichol’s Workshops and Robin Nichol’s Gallery.

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Helen is an archaeologist and educator. She has a BA (Hons 1) and MPhil in Archaeology from the University of Sydney where she has been a casual course coordinator, lecturer and tutor since 1995. Helen teaches Sydney University’s Ancient History University Preparation Course and has created, convened and delivered numerous archaeology workshops, courses, study days, talks and lectures for wide and diverse school, adult, professional and museum audiences. She spent three years as the Nicholson Museum’s Education Officer and has created and run gifted-and-talented-student workshops for the Faculty of Science at Sydney University and the NSW Department of Education.

Helen is the archaeologist who appears through the round window on Playschool and was a founding partner in Astarte Resources where she has written and edited scripts and produced educational resources. She has worked on archaeological sites in Europe, the Middle East and Australia and has developed and led over thirty overseas cultural study tours. Helen is the National Coordinator for National Archaeology Week and is currently a producer at the Powerhouse Museum.

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Jessica Nicotra graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology, followed by a Master’s in Teaching for secondary education. She has several years of experience as a high school science and senior biology teacher.

Jessica’s teaching approach is straightforward, focusing on making science engaging and interesting for her students. She aims to share her passion for science through a direct and practical teaching style.

Jessica is dedicated to fostering a love for science in her students, hoping to inspire the same enthusiasm for the subject that she has.

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Patrick Nielsen. Tutor of CCE

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Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio was born in Adelaide, South Australia. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Law degree at Adelaide University. Following law school, she worked as a lawyer, specialising in family law. Rabbi Ninio then attended rabbinical school at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion. She received a Master of Arts in Hebrew Letters and was ordained as a rabbi in 1998. She began her work at Emanuel Synagogue in Sydney, Australia that year. Rabbi Ninio was the first female rabbi at Emanuel Synagogue and the third Australian born woman to be ordained as a rabbi.

Rabbi Ninio has an interest in midrash and liturgy as well as a passion for storytelling and Jewish folktales. She is an active leader in the Synagogue’s social justiceprogrammes and is committed to the pursuit of tikun olam, working to heal the world through deeds and actions. Rabbi Ninio has been involved in interfaith work and is a regular participant on panels and speaker about Judaism but especially issues of womenand religion.

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Keiko Nishiyama specialises in Japanese language education for adult learners and has been teaching in Sydney since 2010. She currently designs and provides interactive classes, based on a variety of learning goals called “can-do” goals, helping to create an enjoyable and relaxed atmosphere for learners to improve their communication skills in Japanese.

After becoming qualified as a Japanese teacher in 2010, Keiko continued her professional development through her participation in the “Program of Designing Curriculum for the Teachers of the JF Japanese Language Courses” in 2011, 2013 and 2014 at the Japan Foundation Japanese-Language Institute, Urawa in Japan. She completed her Advanced Training Program there in 2016.

Keiko has Masters degree in European Linguistics from the University of Freiburg (Germany) and in Modern Literature from the University of Grenoble III (France).

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Richard Niu has been teaching the Chinese Martial Arts course at the University of Sydney Confucius Institute since August 2011. Richard Niu was born in Hebei province, China in 1984. Richard began martial arts training at 6 years old. For many years, he has trained with the best martial arts teachers in China. Richard is a multi-awards winning Chinese martial arts master who has won numerous awards in international martial arts competitions between 2006 and 2009, including 2006 “Kung Fu Star” China National TV Competition, 2006 Macau Chinese Martial Arts International Competition, 2007 International Martial Arts Competition and 2009 Hong Kong International Kung Fu Competition.

In 2009, Richard graduated from the Hebei Normal University with a Master degree in Chinese Martial Arts Teaching. Richard believes that martial arts is a state of mind, people can improve their fitness and self-defence ability through learning kung fu movements and self-defence techniques.

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Gerry has taught meteorology and written about meteorology. As an ocean racing sailor he has sailed over 20,000 nautical miles, including one Sydney to Hobart and two Lord Howe Island races as well as a cruise to New Zealand via Lord Howe Island. But not including over 25,000 nautical miles at sea on the HMAS Melbourne. His sailing experiences include several cyclones and typhoons and endless calms. For many years he has sailed on Sydney Harbour in yachts ranging from Hood 23s to 12 meter boats, including two seasons on Gretel 2.

Gerry lectured at Qantas as an operations instructor on the B707 and had his own school teaching pilot theory for the Department of Aviation exams, including meteorology, to senior commercial pilot standard. Since 2003 he has tutored on the annual summer school at UNSW.

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Ali Asghar Noorani. Tutor of CCE

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Alex Norman is a sessional lecturer and tutor at the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales. He completed his doctorate at the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney in 2009 with a thesis examining the intersection of travel and secular spiritual practice by contemporary Westerners. His book Spiritual Tourism will be released by Continuum in 2011. He is co-Editor of the journal Literature & Aesthetics, and Vice-President of the Sydney Society for Literature and Aesthetics. His research interests include tourism and religion, new religious movements, food, and the practice of secular spirituality in the everyday. He hopes to make tourism a more thoroughly examined subject in the study of religion.