Dr. Joseph Toltz
Dr Joseph Toltz is an ethnomusicologist in the Discipline of Jewish Studies, and Research Manager in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. An expert on musical experiences of Holocaust Studies and Jewish music and its migrations in Anglophone countries, he is a former fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2011), and recipient of a UK Arts & Humanities Research Council large grant (Performing the Jewish Archive, 2014-18). As part of this grant, Joseph was Artistic Director and curator of the “Out of the Shadows” Festival in Sydney, bringing over 10,000 participants and audience members together to interact with archival music and theatre from Austria, Finland, South Africa, Great Britain, Czechia, and Australia, including a children’s opera, choral works, two wartime cabarets (one from Finland, the other written in the Terezín Ghetto).
In 2024, his co-produced film “Singing up the Past: the songs of Guta Goldstein” premiered at the Jewish International Film Festival (Melbourne/Sydney), and received its US premiere in NYC in April 2026 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
Joseph is a foundation researcher for the NeuroMusic Collaborative, a research project led by Professor Sharon Naismith AM, testing the hypothesis that active musical training can assist in maintaining neuroplasticity in older adults susceptible to neurodegenerative diseases.
Joseph is an active musician: composer, singer, choir director and arranger. He works primarily in the Jewish community, with his arrangements having premiered at Hamer Hall (Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, 2024) and Wigmore Hall (Holocaust Memorial Day, 2019). He continues to serve Jewish congregations across Sydney, and his arrangements can be found in the collections of Synagogue choirs across Australia. His latest project concentrates on the life and music of Wilhelm Grosz (1894-1939), a Viennese Jew whose career traversed the lush late Romantic harmonic language of Mahler and Schreker, moving towards jazz and experimental modes in Weimar Berlin, and finally ending up as a writer of popular hits in London and the USA.
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Dr. Anna Boucher
Anna Boucher is an Associate Professor in Public Policy and Comparative Politics at the University of Sydney. From 2023-2024, she was Chair of Discipline, where she managed 47 full-time and part-time staff. She is an active member of the Institute of Public Administration Australia (NSW Branch), Women’s Lawyers Association NSW, the Australian Labour Law Association, the Australian Political Studies Association and the Federal Dispute Resolution Section of the Law Council of Australia.
As well as being an academic, she is an admitted solicitor and has undertaken legal work at Clayton Utz Law Firm and Violet Co & Legal, the latter in workplace law. A frequent public speaker, she engages in considerable practical and academic work in public and legal policy. In 2026, she is seconded at 70% to Fragomen Law Firm International to work on international projects related to migration.
She sits as VP (Independent) on the Executive Committee of The Australian Institute of Employment Rights, the Immigration Minister of Australia’s Migration Advisory Council on SkilledMigration Expert Sub-Committee (renewed appointment) and was from 2022-3 on the Advisory Panel of the NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner. She is on the academic advisory panel to the British Office of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement on labour abuse. She is also an academic consultant to Outside Opinion. She reviews for the leading journals, publishers and funding agencies globally in political science, public policy and law (and sometimes, upon request, in economics, demography and industrial relations, as it relates to migration).
Her tertiary education encompasses political science, law and research methods at the University of Sydney and the London School of Economics and Political Science and she holds six qualifications in these fields. She is a former Commonwealth Scholar, University Medalist, Zeit Ebelin Bucerius Scholar in Migration Studies, Laffan, DECRA and SOAR Fellow. Her research, teaching and policy practice focuses on unsurfacing, documenting and ultimately solving subterranean political and social phenomenon. She is a frequent media commentator advisor in Australia and globally.
Her leadership style is humanistic and she has been nominated for, and won, many awards, most recently in 2024, the Faculty Teaching Leadership Award for excellence in mentoring and leading others in their teaching. She was one of 8 Australians who completed the 9-month Future Shapers DLI training in 2025 that focuses on vertical leadership models.
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