Who We Are
The Link Affiliates Team are part of the Australian Digital Futures Institute (ADFI) at the University of Southern Queensland. The Link Affiliates team includes specialists with strategic, technical and project management expertise in technical interoperability and standards for e-research and e-learning. The broader ADFI team participate in national and international e-learning and e-research projects.
The Link Affiliates Team is distributed and portable. It has members based in Queensland NSW and Victoria.
The Link Affiliates Team has a relationship with the University of Melbourne eScholarship Research Centre. Some of our staff are are hosted at the eRSC offices and we undertake collaborative projects with the eRSC.
The team collaborates with Australian communities, infrastructure projects, and standards organizations to achieve its goals (see How We Work).
University of Southern Queensland Australian Digital Futures Institute (ADFI)
The primary mission of ADFI is to advance the science, technology and practice of advanced distributed learning systems, both academic and administrative.
University of Melbourne eScholarship Research Centre (eSRC)
The eSRC is a research centre outside the Melbourne University Faculty structure aimed at facilitating interdisciplinary, intra-institutional and inter-organisational collaboration. The Centre's strengths are in cultural informatics, archives, data preservation and sustainable information systems for research.
Link Affiliates Team
- Yvonne Cheong Oy Ling - Technical Project Officer
Yvonne's primary roles are web support and assisting in software development work. She has a background in the manufacturing environment and specialized in simulation and process modeling. Yvonne is based at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) in Toowoomba.
- Ashley Lourey - Project officer (web developer)
Ashley's current role involves administrative, communication and developer tasks supporting the activities of Link Affiliates. His has a background in web development for both the public and private sector, whilst also providing support to users involved in a large, educational web-based editorial project in the United Kingdom. Previously, Ashley was the Project support officer for the international e-Framework Initiative. Ashley is based at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) in Toowoomba.
- Dennis Macnamara - Project Director
Dennis provides overall management input and leads the communication and engagement with the sector. Dennis has worked in education for over 30 years in both public and private sectors and across schools, vocational education and higher education. He has expertise in both managing the development of content and the delivery of services and has been responsible for designing successful business models for the design and delivery of flexible and innovative learning services whilst in employ at AEShareNet and in his involvement with the PILIN (Persistent Identifiers) and LIMF (Learning Identity Framework Management) projects.
- Dr. Nick Nicholas - Business Analyst
Nick contributes expertise to data modelling and repository interoperability projects. His major involvement has been in the successful PILIN (Persistent Identifiers), FRED (Repository Federation) and LIMF (Student Identity) projects. He has a background in Greek linguistics, computing in the humanities, natural language processing and character encoding. He is based at the University of Melbourne's e-Scholarship Research Centre.
- Owen ONeill - Business Analyst
Owen is project manager of the E-standards for Training project (funded through the Australian Flexible Learning Framework). The project is a primary driver in the collaborative adoption of technical standards for e-learning content and systems in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) system. Owen's expertise comes from previous work on e-learning standards and interoperability initiatives in Australia and Europe.
- Marisa Parker - Project Operations Manager
Marisa co-ordinates workflow processes (including liaison with the USQ financial and legal offices to ensure best practice operational methodology) and the communication and dissemination of information for the Link Affiliates activities. Previously, Marisa was Project Officer for the successful RUBRIC Project that produced the RUBRIC Toolkit - a repository manager's guide. Prior to that, Marisa was the Executive Officer for the e-Learning body ACODE. Marisa is based at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) in Toowoomba.
- Dr. Nigel Ward - Technical Director
Nigel's expertise in standards and interoperability provides technical and strategic advice to the Link Affiliates team, Australian education communities and international collaborative projects. Prior to his work with Link Affiliates, Nigel was an interoperability analyst at The Le@rning Federation (an initiative of state and federal governments of Australia and New Zealand). Nigel's technical knowledge spans distributed systems architectures, service oriented approaches, persistent identifiers, usability, accessibility, and formal specification.
Previous Team Members
- Steve Bennet - Business Analyst
Steve is involved in documenting the e-Framework, and producing e-Framework artefacts connected with the digital humanities initiative Project Bamboo. He has a background in software engineering and applied linguistics and has worked in school management system database analysis, e-Learning content production, build engineering and system administration in e-Research. Steve is based at the University of Melbourne's e-Scholarship Research Centre.
- Kerry Blinco - Director Strategy
Kerry participates in a range of national and international technical standards activities with Standards Australia, IMS, ISO, NISO, OASIS and the IEEE LTSC. Kerry's particular focus is on frameworks and architectural models, and the intersection between research, education and information environments. She has been involved in a number of national and international collaborative projects and she works closely with the international e-Framework for Education and Research partnership.
- Caroline Drury - Business Analyst
Caroline's current role involves participation in accessibility, e-learning standards, and curriculum content projects. Caroline's background in information technology led to her working with Library systems, predominantly Institutional Repositories. Prior to joining Link Affiliates, Caroline held roles as Senior Technical Officer for the RUBRIC Project, and Manager of Repository Services for USQ Toowoomba. Caroline is based at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) in Toowoomba.
- Dr. Judith Pearce - Business Analyst
Judith is a part-time Information Technology consultant specialising in service frameworks and Interoperability standards. She contributes to discussions within Project BAMBOO, the OLE Project, the international e-Framework for Education and Research and national and international standards groups. Judith has had a long career as a librarian at the National Library of Australia.
