Ms Denby Weller

Biography

Denby Weller is a video journalism lecturer in the Media and Communication department at Swinburne University. She has also taught at UTS, UNSW and Sydney University. She is a current PhD candidate at the University of Technology, Sydney, investigating the relationship between social media and Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy.

Before becoming a lecturer, Denby was a video journalist at the Sydney Morning Herald, gaining recognition for her work covering the Martin Place Siege in 2014, the same sex marriage debate and the US Presidential election in 2016. She travelled to Nepal in 2015 for SMH, producing the multimedia story, Trekking the Annapurna Circuit, which garnered a special mention at the PANPA Awards. She still freelances, and has produced words, video and images for publishers including the BBC, News.com.au, Lonely Planet, Hardie Grant and many more. From 2014 to 2022, Denby was a senior contributor and columnist for Australian rock climbing magazine, Vertical Life. She has written and produced two feature films, Coffee (2010) and Bunyip (currently in post-production). Her first short film, Shut In, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. Denby is producing and directing a feature-length documentary as part of her PhD project. 

Denby is a trainer for the Google News Initiative, and has delivered training in online investigation skills for journalists, students and educators in Australia and Kyrgyzstan. She is a member of Adobe's Education Exchange, and a leader in bringing the technologies of multimedia journalism into the classroom.

Denby has contributed to curriculum design, assisting with the development of a new journalism major at UTS in 2019. She has developed undergraduate and postgraduate units for Macleay College, UTS and Swinburne, and currently convenes and teaches into a range of units across the Communications and Journalism programs. Denby has been recognised for her outstanding teaching with two Adobe Innovation Grants, in 2020, and 2022.