Cultural Competence Catalyst

Professor Gabrielle Russell
Professor Gabrielle Russell is Academic Director of the National Centre for Cultural Competence at the University of Sydney, where she leads work on leadership, cultural competence, cultural safety and anti-racism. Through multidisciplinary, intersectional research, she develops resources and approaches that support individual and organisational change in higher education and beyond.

Her research explores how to build cultural responsiveness from diverse perspectives and positions, and how to foster deeper, lasting understanding and practice of leadership and transformative change at individual, organisational and systemic levels. Her work examines how leaders can drive organisational change from a culturally responsive and culturally safe position, recognising the role of power, privilege and positionality in shaping institutional culture. She supports organisations to embed these principles in governance, policy and everyday practice, creating environments where people of all backgrounds feel respected, valued and safe, and have a strong sense of belonging.

Dr Matthew Tyne
Dr Matthew Tyne is Education Lead at the National Centre for Cultural Competence (NCCC) at the University of Sydney. He co-develops and delivers the Centre's courses and workshops on cultural responsiveness, racial literacy, and anti-racism.

Before joining the NCCC, Matthew spent twenty years in international community development, mainly in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, and in HIV/sexual health promotion with diverse communities in Australia. There he learned how easily well-meant development programs pass off their own values as neutral, and how much harm follows when no one notices. He is also a theatre researcher. His doctoral research followed a group of queer men in Colombo, Sri Lanka, who made theatre from their own stories to raise issues they could not easily discuss in public. His current research covers queer performance, censorship and cultural production in Sri Lanka and South Asia. He also studies anti-racism education in universities, specifically how institutions respond when that work meets resistance.

Dr Amy McHugh
Dr Amy McHugh is a Lecturer at the National Centre for Cultural Competence (NCCC) at the University of Sydney, where she teaches, researches, develops curriculum and facilitates. Her work focuses on cultural competence, critical self-reflection, anti-racism, intercultural learning, and the responsible use of emerging technologies in education and professional practice.

Amy’s doctoral research challenged individualised understandings of intercultural competence, reconceptualising it as a co-constructed and situated achievement. Her recent research explores how generative AI can support critical self-reflection and anti-racism. Rather than treating AI as a tool for efficiency or quick answers, she investigates how it can introduce productive friction into learning: slowing users down, interrupting habitual responses, and creating space for questioning and perspective-taking, while users retain responsibility for interpretation and judgement. She also examines the ethical, cultural and representational risks of using AI in reflective and relational learning. Amy brings extensive experience in Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) and is particularly interested in cultural competence as an ongoing, relational practice shaped by people, institutions, technologies and wider social structures.