Natalia Veles

Natalia is an experienced researcher, educator and academic group leader based at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia with research and doctoral student supervision affiliation with the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. Her academic background has been in organisational sociology, social and intercultural psychology, and career development within the interdisciplinary higher education field of research, with a particular curiosity for how organisations work. She is interested in how organisational boundaries and discursive spaces are co-constructed and enabled by individuals and organisations, and how these boundaries and spaces impact collaborations among teams and individuals. Her long-standing research interest is in how spatial theory is applied to studying organisational and cultural boundaries, boundaries of professional group identities and work roles; and how affective and cognitive dimensions of boundary-crossing are reflected in collaborative work of the diverse university actors. She uses the university third space as a metaphor, a method, and a topic of research into the university collaborative capital. Natalia is a member of the Advisory Board of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. She is also on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management (Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis) and a regular reviewer for international higher education journals. Her recent research monograph "Optimising the Third Space in Higher Education: Case Studies of Intercultural and Cross-Boundary Collaboration" was published by Routledge in 2022. 

Natalia is currently working on an international research project that investigates third space sustainable careers across the universities in Australia and Japan. In collaboration with Professor Wendy Patton (QUT), she guest edits a Special Issue "Sustainable career in Higher Education" in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, which is planned for publication in early 2026. 

In addition, she contributes to a research project that focuses on the educational disadvantages of neurodivergent students in professional (WIL) placements of higher education students.