The Australian breakdancer who became a global viral sensation after her zero-score performance at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games’ inaugural breaking competition has reportedly lost her long-held academic position amid sweeping cost-cutting at one of Australia’s top higher education institutions.
Rachael Gunn, professionally known by her stage name Raygun, catapulted to worldwide notoriety last summer when her routine at the Paris Games — which included novelty moves inspired by hopping kangaroos, wriggling snakes, and the popular 20th-century party dance the sprinkler — earned no points from judges. The clip of her performance spread rapidly across social media, spawning thousands of memes and turning the relatively little-known breakdancer into a household name overnight.
Before her Olympic debut, Gunn had built a 10-plus-year academic career at Sydney’s Macquarie University, where she worked as a lecturer in media and popular culture. She earned her PhD from the institution in 2017, with a doctoral thesis examining the gender politics of Sydney’s underground breaking culture. Her research agenda has long centered on the cultural politics of street dance, including a commissioned study for the City of Sydney analyzing the experiences of street dancers performing in public urban spaces.
According to new reporting from the *Australian Financial Review*, Gunn is among the staff cut in Macquarie University’s latest round of program redundancies, which is part of broader cost-saving initiatives sweeping Australia’s higher education sector. The report notes that widespread declines in international student enrollment — a key source of revenue for Australian universities — have pushed dozens of institutions to eliminate roles to balance their budgets, with Macquarie’s Arts department the latest to undergo restructuring.
A spokesperson for Macquarie University declined to confirm or comment on details of Gunn’s employment status, citing longstanding institutional policy to protect the privacy and legal rights of individual staff members. “This is our standard practice for legal and privacy reasons,” the spokesperson reiterated to media.
Gunn’s redundancy comes months after her Olympic performance drew public criticism from Australian Senator Gerard Rennick, who used her profile to attack publicly funded academic programs he deemed unproductive. In a public Facebook post following the Games, Rennick questioned how many “obscure and pointless courses” Australian universities offered with taxpayer subsidies, adding, “It also goes to show just because you have a PhD in something doesn’t mean you are any good at it.”
In the months following her viral Olympic moment, Gunn capitalized on her newfound global fame by launching a venture on the celebrity personalized content platform Cameo, where she charges fans approximately AU$70 for custom greeting videos. The platform allows supporters of public figures from sports, entertainment, and politics to purchase one-of-a-kind personalized messages directly from creators.