PhD candidates Shakiba Barghi and Bethany Kiss selected for ABC TOP 5 residency

University of Melbourne PhD candidates Shakiba Barghi and Bethany Kiss have been selected for the 2026 ABC TOP 5 residency program.

ABC TOP 5 is a professional development program for early-career researchers designed to strengthen communication skills and support participants to share their expertise with broader audiences across audio, television and digital media.

Shakiba is a PhD candidate in the School of Culture and Communication in the Faculty of Arts. Her research explores how literary culture is evolving in digital spaces through visual, social and creative reading practices. Focusing on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, she examines how readers build entire aesthetic worlds around books.

Following the announcement, Shakiba said: “I’m incredibly honoured and excited to be selected. I think my research resonates beyond academia because it’s ultimately about the ways people connect with stories, with culture, and with each other.

“We often hear conversations about whether reading is ‘dying’, but what I’m seeing is something very different. Reading is evolving. It’s becoming more interactive, more visual, and more deeply embedded in digital everyday life. I’m excited by the possibility of sharing a different perspective on reading culture.”

Bethany is an architect and PhD candidate in the Faculty of Science. Her research explores how people most commonly encounter wildlife in buildings, a possum in the roof or a bat in the wall, demonstrating how animals already use built environments as habitat. She studies how people respond to sharing space with wildlife and how these insights can inform the design of buildings and cities.

In response to her residency, Bethany said: "This residency is an exciting opportunity to learn how to communicate those ideas beyond academia, to reach people who might never read an ecology journal, but who have a home, garden or local environment and want to do more for biodiversity.

“In a biodiversity crisis, sharing stories and solutions matters more than ever. I feel incredibly grateful and excited for the opportunity to work with some of Australia's most influential communicators."

As part of the residency, Shakiba and Bethany will undertake a two-week placement at ABC offices, where they will receive media training and practical experience under the guidance of ABC journalists and broadcasters.