Rate My Professor Kurt Sengul

Dr. Kurt Sengul is a Macquarie University Research Fellow (MQRF) in the School of Communication, Society and Culture, Faculty of Arts, at Macquarie University, joining in 2024. He earned his PhD in Media and Communications from the University of Newcastle in 2022, with a thesis entitled 'Populism and the Far Right in Contemporary Australia: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Pauline Hanson's Senate Speeches in the 45th Parliament.' His research investigates how contemporary far-right, extremist, and anti-democratic movements exploit shifts in twenty-first-century media and communication systems. His three-year MQRF-funded project, 'Media Populism, Democracy and the Public Sphere in Australia,' explores the nexus between media and far-right populism, assessing implications for liberal democracy, pluralism, and the public sphere. In 2025, he received the Early Career Researcher of the Year award at the Faculty of Arts Research Excellence Awards. As principal chief investigator, he leads five projects totaling over $1.3 million, including an Australian Research Council Discovery Project worth $620,839.

Sengul has published extensively on populism, the far right, and political communication in prestigious journals such as Television & New Media, Political Studies, Critical Discourse Studies, The Journal of Language and Politics, and Media International Australia. Notable works include ''It's OK to be white': the discursive construction of victimhood, 'anti-white racism' and calculated ambivalence in Australia' (Critical Discourse Studies, 2022) and ''Nazis aren't welcome here': selling democracy in the age of far-right extremism' (Media and Communication, 2024). His forthcoming book, Far-Right Populism in Australia: Communication, Discourse, Performance, is slated for publication by Bloomsbury. He serves on the editorial boards of Communication Research and Practice and Springer's Language of Politics series, acts as Secretary of the Australian Political Studies Association's LGBTQIA+ Caucus, and as NSW Representative for the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Communication Association. His scholarship, cited over 680 times on Google Scholar, has appeared in international volumes and media outlets including ABC, The Guardian Australia, and The New York Times.