Hello, ciao! I’m Daniella. I work between Kaurna Country, Tarndanya/Adelaide, and Wurundjeri Country, Naarm/Melbourne as a Cultural Studies scholar, researcher, and community arts practitioner. I am a surfer, skater, and big old nerd.

The sea and me

The ocean has been an anchor for me my entire life. I feel the most free whenever I am with it. I have been surfing on and off since my twenties, but living with a disability has frequently disrupted my surfing journey. In my mid-thirties, I had to more or less relearn how to surf. In doing so, I also started to redefine my relationship with surfing. I started to understand more acutely how certain surfing norms around gender, dis/ability, and cultural difference had negatively impacted (and continued to impact) my surfing experience.

I surf because it is fun, because it reconnects me with my body, and because it helps me feel free. But these positive experiences can be dampened by who I encounter on the beach or in the lineup, or external expectations about what surfing is and who can take up space as a “legitimate” surfer. I began to connect online with surfers offshore, especially in North America, who were also starting to ask questions about normative surf culture in Anglo societies, and was inspired by the amazing work happening in this space in skating communities (check out the Community + Resources page for more on this!).

My hope is that The Section will add to the cultural shift slowly happening in surfing. I hope the conversations we have and the stories we share will help enable marginalised surfers to take up more space, as well as encourage new folks into the water. Most importantly, I want people to feel welcome and safe doing so.

I can’t wait to share with and learn from you!

Expertise

I specialise in migrant identity, critical multiculturalism, and ethnic and race studies. I completed a PhD in 2016, jointly-awarded by the University of Melbourne and the University of British Columbia. My dissertation analysed the intersection of multiculturalism, whiteness, and digital art practice. My first book, Mediating Multiculturalism: Digital Storytelling and the Everyday Ethnic was published in 2020 (Anthem Press). In 2013, I co-founded the (now archived) online arts community I’ll Be Your First Mate on the topic of asylum seeking and migration, and, with Drs M. Eliatamby-O’Brien (Central Washington University) and Safdar Ahmed (Refugee Art Project), I currently co-manage Cosmopolitan Possibilities, a diasporic literature project. I am a member of Ascolta Women, a collective of creative multi-generation Italian-Australian, and Italian Affiliated, women.