Helen Wolfenden is a Senior Lecturer in Radio and Journalism at Macquarie University. She is a practice-based researcher whose work examines the conditions under which knowing becomes possible in contemporary media, journalism, and education, with particular attention to the enabling and constraining features of communicative environments that shape whether knowing can occur. Her research is concerned with how communicative forms and practices shape access to knowledge, particularly through voice- and listening-based media that enable meaning to unfold over time.

Helen’s work is grounded in spoken-word media, including radio, podcasting, and audiobooks, understood as sites where questions of authority, voice, authenticity, and communicative access become especially visible. Her doctoral research examined how ABC radio presenters construct on-air identity, and her subsequent scholarship has explored performing authenticity, the often-invisible labour of producers, and emergent audio practices such as pop-up and pandemic-era streaming. She has also co-authored experimental scholarly audio, including collaborative audio publications on the philosopher Günther Anders and the creation of a sonic conclusion for an edited collection on the moral dimensions of humour.

Across her research and teaching, Helen is interested in the relationship between professional practice and academic knowledge, and in how each can inform the other. This focus is reflected in her work in journalism pedagogy and autism-friendly practice, including her involvement in the development and delivery of an autism-friendly journalism course created for the Australian television program The Assembly. The course explored how journalistic questioning and knowledge-making can be shaped through different forms of communicative support, pace, and structure.

Helen is also a Chief Investigator on a major externally funded interdisciplinary research project examining the nutritional advantages of fresh produce, with a particular focus on bioactive compounds. In this work, she contributes expertise in public communication and knowledge translation, exploring how complex scientific research can be made accessible, meaningful, and usable for non-specialist audiences.

Prior to joining Macquarie University, Helen taught journalism, radio, and podcasting at the University of Salford and the University of the West of Scotland. She spent the first part of her professional life as a radio broadcaster with the ABC and the BBC, working as a presenter, producer, manager, and researcher. This sustained professional background continues to inform her research orientation, which is applied, dialogic, and attentive to the ethical dimensions of communicative practice.

Helen’s research focuses on the communicative affordances of spoken-word media and related forms of public communication. She is interested in how voice- and listening-based practices shape access to knowledge, authority, and understanding, particularly in journalism, education, and other public-facing contexts.

Her research interests include:

• spoken-word media, including radio, podcasting, and audiobooks
• communicative affordances of voice, listening, and temporal narrative
• professional practice as a site of knowledge production
• journalism pedagogy and autism-friendly practice
• communication design and knowledge translation in interdisciplinary research
• ethical and relational dimensions of public communication

Across these areas, her work examines how communicative practices can enable or constrain who is able to understand, engage with, and use knowledge in meaningful ways.