The Australian Research Council have announced the successful ARC Discovery Project applicants for 2025, with HASS securing 10 out of 16 applications that totalled $4,825,345 in funding.
This amazing result is a testament to the breadth of vital research taking place within our Faculty, as the national success rate for this round was 47 per cent compared to us at 62.5 per cent!
Congratulations to the researchers from the following exciting projects:
- Professor Chris Clarkson, (Social Science)
The stone toolkit of the first Homo sapiens from Africa to Australia.
This project aims to explore the technological variability of Homo sapiens in their expansion out of Africa to Australia over the last 200,000 years. The project expects to generate new knowledge in the areas of archaeology and human origins by employing groundbreaking 3D computational analysis of stone tools found in sites spanning the period of Homo sapiens expansion. Expected outcomes of this project are to understand the technological underpinning of our forebears' successful expansion out of Africa, their replacement of other hominin species, and the pace and routes of expansion. This should provide significant benefits in understanding human evolution and the resilience of our species in the face of major climate change.
- Professor Felicity Meakins, (Languages and Cultures); A/Prof Myfany Turpin (USYD); and Prof Linda Barwick (Sydney Conservatorium of Music)
Dingo Lingo: Australia's past through the lens of biology, language & music.
This project investigates 'dingo' related words in Indigenous languages to transform our understanding of the linguistic landscape of Australia from a static collection of languages to a complex picture of vibrant language exchange and social dynamics. As the dingo arrived around 4000yrs ago, these words are within the scope of evolutionary models of language. With First Nations rangers, this project will create a large-scale database of dingo words including from different speech styles and song through detailed case studies. This database will be the basis of a model of language change that better reflects dynamic historical relationships between Indigenous groups. The project will also extend ranger programs to cultural conservation.
- Associate Professor Stephen Carleton (Communication and Arts); Prof Christopher Hay (Flinders Uni); and Dr Adelle Sefton-Rowston (Charles Darwin University)
Re-Mapping the Lost Literary Capital: Darwin/Larrakia Nation.
This project yokes together the scores of novels, plays, short stories, poems, and genre fiction titles that have portrayed Darwin from Federation to the present. In so doing, it aims to pull Darwin from the literary void it has sat in for much of the twentieth century and restore it to the national imaginary. We will work with AustLit and AusStage to offer a series of public lectures and exhibitions at the NT Library, guided literary tours of Darwin, and a monograph that organises the literary texts into a series of accessible themed chapters for future educators, students and researchers. Other benefits include increased cultural visibility for north Australian writers and increased capacity for cultural tourism to the regions.
- Dr Peter Evans, (Historical and Philosophical Inquiry); Prof Gerard Milburn (Mathematics and Physics); A/Prof Sally Shrapnel (Mathematics and Physics); and Dr Katie Robertson (University of Stirling)
The View From Somewhere: embodied agents and the quantum perspective.
Motivated by recent results in quantum foundations, this project aims to develop a novel approach to objective reality by taking seriously the agent perspective in our scientific worldview. Our interdisciplinary team of philosophers and physicists will investigate the physics of embodied agents, exploring how agents learn about the world, codify this knowledge, and navigate their environment. We expect our project to significantly advance knowledge in quantum foundations and embodied agent learning. Our foundational research could underpin future breakthroughs in the research and development of the next generation of embedded intelligent machines, with the potential to unlock the enormous wealth creation capacity of Artificial Intelligence.
- Associate Professor Garth Stahl, (Education); Dr Mair Underwood (Social Science); Associate Professor Elizabeth Edwards (Education); Prof James Smith (Flinders); Prof Murray Drummond (Flinders); and A/Prof Kootsy (Justin) Canuto (Flinders)
Investigating how boys and young men experience their digital lives.
Recently, there have been significant concerns regarding what boys and young men are exposed to online and how it may influence their social and emotional development. The rise of the digital has led to new concerns regarding cyberbullying, body image dysmorphia, self-harm, depression, extremism, social anxiety and suicide. There is a need to learn more about what boys and young men are consuming online and how they interpret it. The proposed research aims to discover new knowledge regarding masculinities/boyhood in an era of technology-mediated societal transformations with a diverse cohort of boys and young men. This proposed research is both timely and of national benefit as it will enhance how we safeguard boys and young men.
- Associate Professor Garth Stahl (Education); Dr Mair Underwood (Social Science); Prof James Smith (Flinders); Prof Murray Drummond (Flinders); and A/Prof Kootsy (Justin) Canuto (Flinders)
Including the voice of boys and young men in their well-being education.
Despite significant concerns about the mental health and well-being of boys and young men, we know very little about how to make health-related education more effective for them. We know existing programs often fail to resonate with boys and young men yet they are rarely given a voice in their mental health and well-being education in schools. This research is student voice-driven and aims to include a diverse cohort of boys and young men (e.g. age, sexuality, ethnicity, disability, location) at the secondary level to understand what can be done to enhance their well-being education. The aim of the project is to begin to build a collection of open-access resources to improve the effectiveness of mental health education for boys. - Dr Jenny Munro (Social Science); Dr Elan Lazuardi (Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia); A/Prof Najmah Najmah (Sriwijaya University, Indonesia); and Dr Els Rieke (University of Papua, Indonesia)
Experiences and inequalities in Indonesia’s transition to hospital birth.
This project aims to explain inequalities in maternal health by investigating the hospital birth experiences of diverse and disadvantaged Indonesian women. Nearly 80% of Indonesian births take place in a health facility but the maternal mortality ratio remains the highest in Southeast Asia. Working with Indonesian researchers, this project expects to produce in-depth knowledge of women’s birth experiences and interactions with maternity care systems. Expected outcomes include new knowledge of why some women avoid health facilities or have negative experiences, and how to improve birth experiences. This benefits Australian and Indonesian agendas to create equitable, inclusive maternal health care and advance equality in our region. - Dr Richard Martin, (Social Science)
Evaluating compensation for harm to Indigenous culture in Queensland.
In the wake of the High Court's (HCA's) decision about compensation for 'cultural loss' in Northern Territory v Griffiths [2019] HCA 7, research is urgently needed on the different forms of harm to Indigenous culture suffered as a result of colonisation. This project aims to undertake the first ethnographic investigation of harm outside the context of litigated compensation claims. By investigating the complexities of Indigenous experiences of colonisation, including frontier violence, incarceration on missions and reserves, and contemporary experiences of heritage destruction and interrupted knowledge transmission, this project will establish the knowledge base to resolve the coming wave of compensation claims by First Nations peoples.
- Professor Shahar Hameiri (Political Science and International Studies); Dr Kelly Gerard (UWA); Dr Annabel Dulhunty (ANU); and Prof Emma Mawdsley (University of Cambridge, UK)
Outsourcing Foreign Policy: Consultants and Contractors in Australian Aid.
Consultants and contractors are central to achieving Australia’s foreign policy goals via international development finance, but little is known about their impacts on the program. This project aims to address this crucial gap by utilising innovative methods for analysing contracts data and conducting interviews across Australia’s development constituency. It expects to produce a novel understanding of outsourcing’s impact on foreign policy and how to optimise it to meet policy goals. Expected outcomes include recommendations for delivering Australian aid, a publicly accessible database, and enhanced capacity for international collaboration and knowledge transfer. It will contribute to Australian development finance’s effectiveness. - Associate Professor Nicholas Carah, (Communication and Arts); Dr Thao Phan (ANU); Prof Mark Andrejevic (Monash University); and Dr Scott Wark (Goldsmiths College, University of London)
The Australian experience of automated advertising on digital platforms.
This project aims to produce new knowledge about how the advertising practices of global digital platforms have developed and how they impact Australians. Expected outcomes include new digital research approaches to investigate how Australians are tracked and targeted by automated and algorithmic advertising. The project will benefit scholarly and public understanding of how advertising on digital platforms represents and classifies Australians, including whether their models discriminate by race, gender, age or class. The project will produce novel and transferable approaches for studying digital media industries and cultures that envision forms of automated media accountable to shared values through public and policy engagement.
