Breaking barriers: Professor Samantha Bennett recognised for championing under-represented students

Professor Samantha Bennett always saw higher education as alien territory.

Growing up in a working-class household where no one in her family had been to university, she attended what she describes as “an incredibly rowdy comprehensive school”, and left with grades that didn’t reflect her potential.

“Even though I’m now a Professor of Music, back then there were obstacles at every step – starting with being told I couldn’t take GCSE music in year 10 because it was focused on a Western classical curriculum, and people like me weren’t seen as ‘proper’ musicians,” she says.

It’s this first-hand understanding of the barriers to higher education faced by people from marginalised backgrounds that has won Bennett the 2025 Australian Council of Graduate Research Award for Excellence in Graduate Research Leadership.

The award recognises her transformative approach to higher degree research leadership, and her commitment to creating equitable pathways for postgraduate students. As Chair of the ANU Thesis Formats Working Group, she led institutional reform in broadening the PhD and changing thesis formats policy and procedure.

In her three years as Associate Dean of Higher Degree Research (ADHDR) in the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS), Bennett has also led reforms from scholarship awarding processes and rationalised coursework delivery to foster both excellence and inclusivity.

“We redesigned the scholarship awarding process so that we don't just go on the rank of who got the best result at master’s level. That's one indicator of what a candidate may bring to our College, but it's not the only one,” she says.

“We ask questions like, where has this candidate come from? Have they had periods of illness? Have they had to work? Have they had to balance their studies with family commitments? 

“I’m really pleased that this has already resulted in a more diverse cohort.”

Finding her own way to higher education

For Bennett, there were no clear pathways to university at her school.

“Our teachers didn’t even show us how to apply. Most of my classmates left school at 16 to work in shops or factories, and going on to do further education was rare,” she says.

Bennett studied sound engineering and music technology at a further education college (TAFE) where she excelled, eventually using her Higher National Diploma (HND) in music technology as a bridging course to “top up” to a degree at City University through a one-year program. 

Her academic journey shifted when her PhD supervisor at Surrey University, leading popular musicologist Professor Allan Moore, helped her adapt to the culture of academia. 

“He suggested we submit a presentation to a conference at King's College London. It felt like a fairytale, all grand buildings and no one who had an accent like mine. It was both intimidating and incredibly exciting,” she says.

“And I thought, I’ve got something to say. I’m as smart as everyone else here – I’m just not posh.” 

Winning a rare Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) doctoral scholarship for popular music research sealed her new path, and she credits her success to a bit of luck – the right supervisor, the right support at the right time, and taking every opportunity that came along.

Now, Bennett balances her ADHDR role with active research, and this year will publish two books: Gear: Cultures of Audio and Music Technologies, co-authored with Associate Professor Eliot Bates (The MIT Press), and Secrets and Revelation in Music and Audio Technology Cultures (Cambridge University Press).

“Music technology and audio production is a male-dominated field, and I take the responsibility of being a female in that world seriously,” she says. 

“In these works, I'm showing the problems that exist in our discipline, but also offering up solutions about how problematic music technology cultures can be dismantled in a way that makes them more inclusive.

Championing inclusivity

Under Bennett’s leadership, CASS has strengthened its international partnerships, sending students to Syracuse University in New York and participating in the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council doctoral training program.

Bennett says these initiatives are valuable for ANU students but also raise the profile of arts and humanities research. 

“It means we’re on the front foot saying that arts and humanities is just as important as STEM research,” she says.

“We can operate in this highly effective and nuanced, communicative and translational way, and more than anything, we can assert the importance of what we do.” 

In 2022, at the request of the student committee, Bennett delivered a keynote at the AHRC Doctoral Training Program Conference at Cambridge University which focused on class barriers in academia, bringing her unique perspective to elite institutions including Oxford and Cambridge.

“My research area is music technology and sound recording, so autoethnography is not my methodological forte, but I spoke about how I lived in a council flat while doing my PhD, and how the PhD brought me out of poverty,” she says.

This perspective helped Bennett think about what inclusion really means, and understanding the subtle ways that people can exclude others without knowing it. 

Another key focus of Bennett’s leadership has been addressing isolation among HDR candidates, a problem that was exacerbated during the pandemic.

In response, her team realigned and rationalised the coursework across the college “to factor in cohort-building experiences, to consolidate that provision, and to really promote the idea of working collaboratively in ways that would enable peer support”.

Looking ahead

The Universities Accord identified Indigenous students and students from lower SES backgrounds as the two key demographics requiring focused support, and this is a significant focus for Bennett. 

“I want to use this award at sector level to highlight the work we need to do for HDR candidates who are from lower SES backgrounds, who are Indigenous, who are from marginalised groups,” she says.

“We need to get some sector-wide thinking going about how we can address that and do a far better job of supporting those candidates, being welcoming, having systems in place to really support them and their undergraduate degrees. This goes beyond HDR.”

The greatest reward for Bennett is seeing students overcome challenges to complete their research degrees. 

“That's the most thrilling part of my job – enabling other people to succeed and to reach their potential. It’s what we’re here for.”

This story was originally published in ANU Research. Article by Kathryn Vukovljak