Dr Bilquis Ghani is Lecturer in Arts at the University of Canberra. Her research focuses on the mobilisation of the creative process through moments of social and cultural rupture. Bilquis is lead for Hunar Symposia, a collective of academics and artists creating spaces of decolonisation, discourse and collaboration between practice and theory. Bilquis has decades of experience working in the equity and inclusion space and community outreach, in the tertiary sector as well as the arts. She is also on the board of directors for HADIA foundation, an organisation that runs mobile libraries, multivitamin distribution and emergency support in Afghanistan. Bilquis’s book, ‘Sociology from Art Praxis in Afghanistan: Expression and Resistance in Kabul’ will be released by Palgrave Macmillan in early 2026. Before returning to academia, Bilquis was also Head of Inclusion at the Sydney Opera House.