Ruari Elkington

Ruari Elkington is a Chief Investigator with QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre and has published in the field of screen distribution, screen studies and education. He is a Fellow, and Associate Fellow (Indigenous) of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2021 he was nominated and approved by Council as a member of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS).

Ruari completed his undergraduate degree in Film & TV with First Class Honours at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and received his PhD (The Education Market for Documentary Film: Digital Shifts in an Age of Content Abundance) through the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation. His industry background in is screen distribution and his teaching and research profile spans creative industries and entrepreneurship, screen business and Australia’s film exhibition industry.

In 2018 Dr Elkington was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to investigate new initiatives connecting Creative Industries students and online video creators in collaborative work and in 2019 was appointed to the World Economic Forum (WEF) Expert Network (Future of Information and Entertainment).  In 2022, alongside his ‘Resilient Screens’ research colleague Dr Tess Van Hemert, Dr Elkington co-designed and led the largest national audience survey of Australian cinemagoing in partnership with Palace Cinemas. In 2023 he was awarded a Queensland Smithsonian Fellowship to work with social video creators to communicate cultural heritage collections to new audiences.

He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Creative Industries at the Queensland University of Technology’s Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice Faculty and QUT’s Deputy Student Ombudsman.