Dr Kirsten Wahlstrom (she/they) is a research and teaching academic and a Certified Professional registered with the Australian Computer Society. While Kirsten acknowledges the privileges that flow from her education, being cis, white, and from her Australian citizenship, as a child and young woman she experienced low-SES circumstances and as a woman in IT, she has sometimes been marginalised and unheard.
Kirsten's research aims to perpetuate well-being and to enable others to thrive. This commenced with revealing the effects of emerging technologies on social constructs and identifying, validating, and applying safeguards. More recently, her research has evolved to take a greater focus on the human factors aspects of cybersecurity.
She was the principal supervisor of Dr Lukman Purnomo and Dr Alice Crawley, and the Advisor of Dr Anisha Fernando. Dr Purnomo studied risk management in zero trust environments, Dr Crawley studied fake news in the wider context of public discourse, and Dr Fernando studied personalisation and search.
At present, Kirsten is the principal supervisor of three doctoral students. Surani Warnakula's research on digital forensic readiness with respect to insider threat in the financial services sector is under examination, Mark Carman is preparing his thesis on vote inflation on Reddit, and Mahdi Shafiei studies authorship attribution of short texts. Kirsten is also the co-supervisor of three doctoral students. Josephine Michalek studies cyber readiness in the context of SMEs, Anita Dewi studies work-integrated learning within libraries, and Mark Koerber's research on indexing fake images is under examination.
Kirsten has been a co-investigator on three successful grants, which funded the doctoral research of Dr Fernando, Dr Crowley, and Mark Carman.
Kirsten's research commitments are reflected in her service, and she contributes to the research community as the Associate Editor for the Journal of Information,Communication and Ethics in Society. She has been a Section Editor for the Australasian Journal of Information Systems and she chaired the organising committee of the 2020 conference of the Australasian Institute of Computer Ethics. In 2021, she chaired the Between and Beyond Codes of Ethics track at ETHICOMP, and at present she co-chairs a track with Professor Mamello Thinyane on values and affordances for ETHICOMP 2025. She also serves the professional community as the immediate past chair of the Australian Computer Society's Professional Ethics Committee and has been a member of its Profession Advisory Board.
Kirsten’s doctoral research was conducted at the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University in Leicester, under the supervision of Dr Ben Fairweather, Assoc Prof Helen Ashman, Dr Sara Wilford, Prof Kathleen Richardson, and Mr Howell Istance. In this research, Kirsten developed and applied a novel method informed by critical social theory to investigate the ways in which Brain-Computer Interfaces disrupt privacy. That method was triangulated with Nissenbaum's contextual integrity approach to identifying privacy disruptions. Findings were reported in four conference papers and one journal paper, all of which are listed on her Google Scholar profile, along with various other publications. A journal paper reporting her doctoral findings is under preparation.
Throughout her time at UniSA, Kirsten has taught large cohorts of commencing first year students. She holds five awards for outstanding teaching practice, among them a national award for providing experiential learning to transnational teams of students. She invites authentic learning through the constructivist and experiential pedagogies, engaging students in purposive active learning tasks and critical reflections. These intellectual activities support the completion of cognitively demanding, multifaceted assessment tasks. Kirsten’s teaching is also characterised by collaborations in which her professional colleagues play an important role, giving talks, providing and supervising projects, coaching students, providing placements, and more. Most importantly of all, Kirsten works with Aboriginal tutors and clients in the first year course she coordinates, privileging their voices and giving traction to UniSA's Stretch RAP.
Throughout her teaching, Kirsten has received positive feedback from students. A recent anonymous student commented, "An amazing educator - Kirsten shines in her role as DTDI lecturer and workshop presenter. She knows the material very well and has a true passion for the concepts and the potential of what this course can deliver. She is enthusiastic and tries to pass that on to her students. Thanks Kirsten." Another commented, "Absolutely fantastic instructor. Cannot fathom the time she spends on the course and making it interesting, exciting and beneficial to her students. Completely respectful and understanding of all kinds of needs. Knew the course off the back of her hand and kept the class in tow. By far the best instructor I have had so far."
Kirsten’s commitment and motivation emerge from her feminist principles which motivate respect for others, inclusivity, intellectual engagement, and social responsibility. In her free time, she prioritises her family, she renovates the house her great-grandfather built, and she maintains a vibrant and diverse social network.