Associate Professor Melissa Laird is the University of Melbourne, Academic Director Curriculum and Transformation, and Deputy Head of School at the Melbourne School of Professional and Continuing Education (MSPACE).
Working in senior academic and leadership roles in the creative-arts education sector for over 25 years Melissa has developed whole-of school strategies and implemented Higher Education transitions that transform the lives of learners through future-focused and immersive, connected-enterprise learning and curriculum design that positively influences individual wealth and well-being through access to the creative and performing arts, and design. She promotes collaboration and communities of creative practice, and champions embodied learning that reflects industry and sector practice. Through her work, Melissa acknowledges and enriches the differing status of learners in continuing, professional and executive contexts, supporting the authorisation of learners’ unique learning pathways, and their productive contribution to the arts-landscape, academe, and the national economy.
Melissa is Co-Chair non-Indigenous of the University’s Reconcilation Network Committee, Co-Chair MSPACE Diversity and Inclusion Committee, Chair of the MSPACE Learning and Teaching Governance Group (UoM), a member of the MSPACE Academic Programs Committee, and external-academic member of the Academic Boards of the National Art School (NAS) and Australian Institute of Music (AIM), and Chair of the Industry Advisory Commuittee at the National Insitute of Circus Arts (NICA). Until recently, she held the senior academic leadership role as Executive Director of Learning and Teaching, at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney.