Scholarships

Developing a compositional language for contemporary Indigenous Australian composers
Supervisor: Dr Dylan Crismani
Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM) 

The aim of this research project is to compile and develop composer resources for Indigenous composers through the revitalisation of traditional song and language. The key outcome of the project will be a new compositional language that revives and revitalises culture, is meaningful for the composers, allows greater expression, and expands the boundaries of contemporary Australian composition.

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Sound Sculpting Wuxia Chivalry: Music and Sound in King Hu’s Chinese Martial Arts Cinema
Supervisor: Dr Tsan-Huang Tsai

The Chinese martial arts genre known as wuxia developed in the 1920s in Shanghai and has further flourished in the Hong Kong and Taiwan film industries since the 1950s, but it only became well-known to the international audiences of world cinema after the success of the Oscar-winning film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee 2000).

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Assessing community views on pest species in Australia
Supervisor: Professor Rachel Ankeny
Department of Classics, Archaeology and Ancient History

Pest species are a growing concern in Australia, particularly given the recent mouse plagues that are causing significant damage to agriculture and property.
This project seeks to perform a rigorous systematic review of existing literature on community views to pest species in Australia in order to identify key themes and gaps in our understandings, with particular reference to rodent pests.

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Fear, Anger, Disgust: Unpleasant Emotions in the Greco-Roman World
Supervisor: Professor Han Baltussen
Department of Classics, Archaeology and Ancient History 

In recent decades, the historical study of emotions has become a booming research field and pioneering studies such as D. Konstan’s The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks (2008) have done much to evaluate the evidence from the ancient world. Building on such important studies and my own earlier research into grief (ARC funded project; book in progress), I ask more broadly how the ancients tried to cope with unpleasant emotions and forms of distress.

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Mum first – performing (digital) motherhood
Supervisor: Dr Kim Barbour
Department of Media 

This project looks at motherhood as a construct and a practice. Of all the ways that ‘women’ as a concept is socially and culturally constructed, it is being (or not being) a mother that often impacts, both positively and negatively, on all other elements of the lives of women. Importantly, these impacts exist whether or not a woman raises children.

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Decolonising Our Curriculum
Supervisor: Associate Professor Katie Barclay
Department of History 

Decolonising the curriculum involves working to create a learning and teaching environment where students engage with a diverse and global range of voices, perspectives and methodological traditions, that supports social justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other minority groups, and which recognises the knowledges and expertise that a range of stakeholders, including students and the general public, bring to the classroom and to their learning.

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Comics and Digital Humanities
Supervisor: Dr Aaron Humphrey
Department of Media 

Comics contain a universe of socio-cultural information that researchers are only beginning to understand and categorise. In this scholarship the student will use digital humanities tools to help unravel, categorise and document some of the crucial cultural data of historical comic books.

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Caring for Our Common Home: The Eco-social Citizenship of Pope Francis
Supervisor: Dr Benito Cao
Department of Politics and International Relations 

Environmental concerns and ecological values are transforming what it means to be a citizen in the 21st century. Governments around the world are recognising environmental rights, activists refer to our duties to the environment, corporations present themselves as good environmental citizens, children are taught to be mindful of their ecological footprint, the media tell us repeatedly to reduce, reuse and recycle, and theorists have begun to consider all this under a new field of study called environmental citizenship.

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Blacklists of Oppressive Regimes
Supervisor: Associate Professor Tim Legrand
Department of Politics and International Relations 

Blacklisting is the primary means by which states around the world officially designate ‘enemies of the state’ and thereby legitimise a host of punitive national security measures. This power is ancient and common in liberal and non-liberal states alike, but the global proliferation of anti-terrorism measures after 2001 paved the way for authoritarian states to exploit blacklisting to label dissenters, human rights activists, NGOs and ethnic minorities as terrorist threats. This project will contribute to a broader ARC-funded project exploring the use of blacklisting globally.

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What Drives Anti-Refugee Sentiment in Australia?
Supervisor: Dr Djordje (George) Stefanovic
Department of Sociology, Criminology and Gender Studies 

What drives anti-refugee sentiment Australia? This project is a new direction for Dr Stefanovic’s work that builds on, but also goes beyond, his current research on right-wing populism and his previous research on refugees. While there is a vast literature on predictors of anti-immigrant sentiment, the research on the anti-refugee sentiment still remains comparatively undeveloped.

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China in the Pacific Islands: partner or problem?
Supervisor: Professor Joanne Wallis
Department of Politics and International Relations 

Since reports in April 2018 that China was in talks to build a military base in Vanuatu (which were denied by both governments), Australia’s anxiety about China’s presence in the Pacific Islands has escalated. Australia has consequently engaged in an extensive ‘step-up’ to enhance its relationships in the region. But it was not that long ago that Australia was seeking to partner with China on joint development projects, exemplified by a program to address malaria in Papua New Guinea.

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