BIO

Robert Cettl AALIA

MTESOL (Flinders University of South Australia)

GDIS (UniSA)

HBA (Flinders University of South Australia)

A Stranger Here Myself is a longitudinal autoethnographic transmedia project exploring China/Australia trans-cultural hybridity. Emerging from Covid-19 pandemic era reforms in Chinese EFL tertiary Inter-cultural Communication pedagogic practice, it is created, designed and content-managed / curated by Robert Cettl.

Robert is a former SAR Research Fellow at Australia's National Film & Sound Archive [NFSA] and published author of scholarly non-fiction for US publishers McFarland & Co. Inc, and Bloomsbury Academic. Since first arriving in China in 2011, Robert has been living and working as an English as Foreign Language [EFL] education professional; an invited panel participant at the 2025 Nishan Forum on World Civilizations in Qufu, Shandong. Recently turning to independent transmedia autoethnography in late-career pedagogic practice, his experimental auto-ethnographic films on Australian disability and LGBT+ performing arts are in the NFSA collection, and his first online screened work was through online journal The Autoethnographer.

As researcher and filmmaker, Robert positions himself as a heterosexual male with a diagnosis and lived experience of schizophrenia. This identity informs both his commitment to insider-driven inquiry and navigation of phenomenological self-disturbances, including hyper-reflexivity and disruptions of self-affection and temporality. This positionality is further shaped by Australian multiculturalism, specifically the inter-generational trauma of being a second generation Australian, his Czech post-WW2 migrant father having been psychologically scarred by a childhood under Nazi occupation. His positionality statement is offered not as a static declaration of identity but as an ongoing methodological orientation. It acknowledges the partiality and situated nature of the knowledge produced in A Stranger Here Myself while maintaining a commitment to rigorous self-interrogation. In keeping with the principles of performative auto-ethnography, the researcher’s self is understood as both the subject and the instrument of inquiry.

PUBLISHED WORKS

(2025). Trans-media auto-ethnography at the 11th Nishan Forum: From Xinjiang to harmony—Intercultural pedagogy and civilizational dialogue [Preprint]. SAGE Advance. https://doi.org/10.31124/advance.175335015.55062303

(2024, May). “Being in time”: China, place memory & pedagogy – From Xinjiang to Shanghai. The Autoethnographer. https://theautoethnographer.com/china-being-pedagogy/
(Artist’s memo accompanying his auto-ethnographic film work; also available via ResearchGate)Notes on additional or related items:

(2022). Break of Day, Gallipoli and ANZAC ideology in the Australian cinema of disability. Overland. https://overland.org.au/2022/10/break-of-day-gallipoli-and-anzac-ideology-in-the-cinema-of-disability/

(2013). Forced entry: Serial killer pornography as patriarchal paradox. In A. MacDonald (Ed.), Murders and acquisitions: Representations of the serial killer in popular culture (pp. 49–66). Bloomsbury Academic. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/murders-and-acquisitions-9781441176301/ (or Amazon editions of the anthology)

(2009). Terrorism in American cinema: An analytical filmography, 1960–2008. McFarland & Company. https://www.amazon.com/Terrorism-American-Cinema-Analytical-Filmography/dp/0786441550

(2003/2007). Serial killer cinema: An analytical filmography with an introduction. McFarland & Company. https://www.amazon.com/Serial-Killer-Cinema-Filmography-Introduction/dp/0786412925 (2007 paperback variants)