Research
Rebecca is a scholar and all-round nerd of satire and politics. She was awarded her PhD in 2014, and was an Endeavour Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Comedy Studies Research, Brunel University London, and a Sessional Academic at Curtin University, Australia. While she’s taking a break from academia, you can still access most of her academic work for free.
Check them out below.
“#whyImVotingUKIP and Citizen Satire: User-Generated Hijacking in Online Political Communication.”
L’usage de Twitter par les candidats #Eurodéputés @Europarl_FR @Europarl_EN: Perspectives internationales lors des élections au Parlement européen en mai 2014. Eds. Brachotte, Gilles and Alexander Frame. Editions EMS: Caen, 2018. 85-113.
“Playful Politicians and Serious Satirists: Comedic and Earnest Interplay in Australian Political Discourse.”
Comedy Studies. Special Journal Edition on Comedy and Seriousness. Volume 6, Issue 1: 63-77, April 2015. DOI: 10.1080/2040610X.2015.1026077
“Under the Guise of Humour and Critique: The Political Co-option of Popular Contemporary Satire.”
Satire and Politics: The Interplay of Heritage and Practice. Ed. Jessica Milner Davis. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 73-102.
Read online here, or
“Kynical Dogs and Cynical Masters: Contemporary Satire, Politics and Truth Telling.”
Humor: International Journal of Humor Research. Volume 27, Issue 2: 183-201, May 2014. DOI: 10.1515/humor-2014-0016
“Public Engagement, Propaganda, or Both?: Attitudes Toward Politicians on Political Satire and Comedy Programs.”
International Journal of Communication. 11(2017), 930–948.
Speaking truth : the play of politics and Australian satire.
PhD Thesis. Curtin University. 2013 (Conferred 2014)
“The Satirists Formerly Known as the Audience: Citizen Satire, Global Landscapes and the Reorientation of Political Debate.”
Re-Orientation: Translingual Transcultural Transmedia. Eds. Hartley, John, Qu Weiguo, Henry Siling Li, and Jin Wen. Fudan University Press, 2015.
“The Larrikin Carnivalesque: Exploring Traditions of Subversion and Grotesque in Australian Humour.”
Changing Facts, Changing Minds, Changing Worlds. Eds. Lunn, Julie et al. Perth: Black Swan Press, 2013. 6-19.
More about Rebecca Higgie’s academic career.
Rebecca’s research passion lies in the study of texts that envisage and engage with politics in unconventional and often mischievous ways. She is similarly concerned with how politicians engage with such texts and how this influences the way they campaign and the way that the public understand or evaluate politics.
Broadly, Rebecca’s research interests include: humour, satire and play; the mediation of contemporary politics; the carnivalesque as a contemporary textual and discursive practice; political participation through play with social media and the production of user-generated content; and ways in which the local and global intersect via televisual and online media.
Rebecca is currently taking a hiatus from academic work to focus on family and creative endeavours but she always welcomes hearing from other scholars. She also strongly believes in open access. If you would like to read any of her work but cannot access it, please get it touch.