Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation
Faculty of Arts and Education
2009
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Funding Period: 2008 - 2010
Investigators: A/Prof R Hoye(La Trobe) Dr MG Nicholson(La Trobe) and Dr KM Brown
Partner Organisation(s): Victorian Health Promotion Foundation
Administering Institution: La Trobe University
Summary: Australian federal, state and local governments allocate more than $4,094 million per year to the provision of sport and recreation services, facilities and programs which service more than 5 million regular participants. This funding is, in part, based on the premise that involvement in sport and recreation develops community wellbeing through the facilitation of social inclusion and connectedness. This research will contribute to the development of policies and practices that will enhance the capability of sport and active recreation organisations to contribute to community wellbeing.
Funding Period: 2007 - 2009
Investigator: A/Prof Linda Hancock
Partner Organisation(s): Hobsons Bay City Council, Global Greenplan Foundation
Summary: New integrated community strategies are needed to deal with the imperative of reducing Australia’s carbon footprint. With an explicit focus on enhancing community engagement for localised greenhouse reduction, this project will generate important analysis and policy prescriptions for demand reduction strategies. The development of enduring sustainable environment attitudinal and behavioural change is central to the National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development, which sees a clear role for governments, business and individuals in progressing ecologically sustainable development. The results will contribute to developing new place-based integrated ecosustainability
models for implementation by local/state governments.
Funding Period: 2007 - 2009
Investigators: A/Prof CA Beavis; Prof CM Bradford; Dr JA O'Mara; Dr C Walsh
Partner Organisation(s): Department of Education & Training, Australian Centre for the Moving Image,
The Victorian Association for the Teaching of English
Summary: The creation of a literate and tech-savvy workforce and community is essential to Australia's future prosperity. By helping teachers better understand and teach ICT-enabled forms of text and literacy, drawing on insights from young people's actual engagement with digital culture in their leisure hours, the project will help strengthen young Australians' capacity to critically evaluate and use ICTs for effective learning and communication. This project will help produce the skills, knowledge and orientations necessary to create smart information use, through developing and strengthening young people's uses and understandings of ICT-based forms of text and literacy.
Funding Period: 2006-2008
Investigators: Dr D Hafner, Em/Prof BJ Rigsby, Ms L Allen, Ms R Wrench, Mr SJ Wilmot
Partner Organisation(s): Museum Victoria
Administering Institution: The University of Queensland
Summary: This project addresses concerns about how museums meet their charter in a diverse society. It will engage museums in a process of brokering and negotiation with indigenous Australians in relation to specific museum collections. There is little formal recognition of how such processes occur within museums and contribute to the creation of shared meanings about ourselves as a nation. It is part of the role of museums as places of learning to engage and fascinate, and this project brings together traditional knowledge and expertise in three fields of study to pass on our national heritage to future generations.
Funding Period: 2006 - 2010
Investigators: Prof K Darian-Smith, Prof WS Logan, Prof GP Seal
Partner Organisation(s) National Library of Australia, Museum Victoria
Administering Institution: The University of Melbourne
Summary: Through extending knowledge of children's playlore in the daily lives and social frameworks of Australians from the 1950s to the present, this project will contribute to broader public and policy discussions concerning educational, recreational and public health outcomes for children. It will enhance understanding of past and contemporary children's play practices and the external influences shaping these, and assist UNESCO and the Australian government in defining intangible cultural heritage. Through partnerships with the National Library of Australia and Museum Victoria, the project will disseminate its findings to the community through publications, conferences and public exhibitions.
Funding Period: 2004 - 2007
Investigators: Dr F Mansouri, Dr MP Leach, Ms DE Smiley
Partner Organisation(s) Brencorp Foundation, Victorian Arabic Social Services (VASS)
Summary: This project investigates the challenges posed by cultural diversity in multicultural schools. It will focus specifically on students from Arabic-speaking background (ASB) attending secondary schools in the Northern and Western regions of Melbourne. The study will assess whether individual students' attitudes and the schools' structures and pedagogical ideology impact upon ASB students' achievements. In using focus group discussions and attitudinal surveys, the study will also test the cultural appropriateness of such methodological procedures. The study's proposed multi-dimensional model will be tested in order to determine the optimal social environments and inter-ethnic relations needed to successfully fulfil the potential of multicultural education.
Funding Period: 2004 - 2007
Investigators: Dr S Srivastava, Dr LC Johnson, Prof MF Meehan, Dr FM Devlin-Glass, Mr D de Bruyn
APA(I) Award(s): 1
Partner Organisation(s): Experimenta Media Arts Inc.
Summary: The application is for an APAI PhD, located within a wider plan by Deakin University and Experimenta Media Arts to develop an interactive mode of analysis of landscape and design of civic spaces across the west coast and hinterland regions in Victoria. The project will locate development and regional cultural understanding within an enriched historical perspective, drawing on cross-disciplinary research and using digital animation in particular to display the 'presence of the past in the present', to explore and promote distinctive and sustainable modes of living, and to construct visual hypotheses for environmental and cultural development in each area.
Funding Period: 2003 -2004
Investigators: Prof B Howe, A/Prof M Considine, A/Prof LI Hancock, Dr SJ Ziguras, Dr IG Manning
Administering Institution: The University of Melbourne
Industry Partner(s):
Brotherhood of St Laurence
Committee for Economic Development of Australia
National Institute for Economic and Industry Research
Summary: The fundamental aim of this project is to explore new institutional arrangements in the area of social policy to cope with structural change in both labour markets and household formation. The project uses the idea of key labour market transitions both to explore the dynamics of labour markets over the life course for individuals or groups and to envisage new types of institutional arrangements that serve to manage risk and enhance people's capacity for social participation. Bringing together a diverse and high-powered group of experts with experience across a range of social policy and labour market arenas, this project will contribute to international debate on the future of the welfare state.
Funding Period: 2003 - 2005
Investigators: Dr MC Langfield, Ms PJ Maclean, Dr PD Monteath
APAI(s): 1
Industry Partner(s): Jewish Holocaust Centre, Inc.
Summary: This project utilises Australia's largest collection of Holocaust video testimonies, held in Melbourne's Jewish Holocaust Centre (JHC), to examine how socio-cultural factors shaped the widely different experiences of Nazi persecution among Holocaust Jewish migrants to Australia, and how video mediates these experiences. Significant conceptual advances will be made in the study of memory, Holocaust and immigration history, class and identity debates, gender analysis, oral and video history and the theory of testimony. A team of experienced CIs will analyse a broad sample of videos, while the APAI will concentrate on studying a single episode. The JHC will act as industry partner.
Funding Period: 2003 - 2005
Investigators: Dr M Townsend, A/Prof E Gullone, A/Prof L St Leger, Mr J Senior, Mr PR Brown, Mr VA HAINING, Mr P Duncan, Mr K Smith
APAI(s): 1
Industry Partner(s):
Parks Victoria
Lort Smith Animal Hospital
City of Melbourne
Centennial Park & Moore Park Trust
Parramatta Park Trust
Summary: Impacts on the health, wellbeing and effective functioning of inner city high-rise residents, resulting from differing levels of access to natural environments, will be studied. Stratified random sampling will be used to select a sample of 600 residents in Melbourne and Sydney, including high-rise apartment owner-occupiers and tenants of high-rise public housing developments. Both groups will include people with differing levels of access to green spaces. Questionnaires based on validated psychometric scales, and qualitative semi-structured interviews will be used to collect data, which will be analysed to assess the impacts of access to nature on health, wellbeing and effective functioning.
Funding Period: 2003- 2005
Investigators: Dr AJ Smith, Ms MM Birtley, Ms S Balderstone, Dr LM McKenzie
APAI(s): 1
Industry Partner(s): Heritage Victoria
Summary: As a consequence of a recent rapid increase in archaeological excavations, Australian museums no longer have resources to store or conserve all archaeological material and require a systematic means of establishing collection management priorities. Through industry and academic consultation and case studies of particular collections, this research will develop criteria for assessing the research potential or scientific significance of individual artefacts and entire collections from historic sites. Along with recognised measures of social and historical significance, the criteria will provide guidelines with which museums can develop national management strategies for this unique heritage.
Funding Period: 2003 - 2005
Investigators: Dr AM Vandenberg, Prof GM Stokes
APAI(s): 1
Industry Partner(s): Australian Council of Trade Unions
Summary: This project undertakes a qualitative study of Australian unionists' usage of networked computers and their potential for increasing trade union membership and participation, and promoting productive diversity in workplaces. At a time of declining unionisation, these issues have become urgent and give rise to key research questions about email and the Internet in trade union organisation and communication with members. The project promises to provide broader theoretical insights into union responses to deregulated labour markets and the globalisation of the economy. The results will be useful to other political and social organisations, as well as government policy makers.
Funding Period: 2002 - 2003
Investigators: Dr L Hancock, Ms V Sheen
Industry Partner(s): Council on the Aging (Australia)
Summary: This project will track diverse pathways in work/retirement transitions, by analysing how the present policy mix accommodates shifts in labour markets, demographic shifts and shifts in households and income distributions. Focused on cohorts aged 45 to 64, it firstly analyses national data sets to track the impact of the current policy mix in terms of income security, industrial relations, housing, health, education and training and work/life. Secondly, it draws on qualitative data to further examine how these transitions are played out. The research will develop a new policy matrix for older workers that addresses risk, social exclusion and social protection.
Funding Period: 2002 - 2003
Investigators: Dr SM Kenny, Dr KM Brown, Ms E Cham
Industry Partner(s): Philanthropy Australia
Summary: The encouragement of philanthropic giving is a current priority of governments globally. The creation of foundations is one strategy for expanding philanthropic activity, with profound implications for public policy and existing foundations. Working with Philanthropy Australia, this study will explore the concept of charitable foundations and recent trends in foundation formation such as the development of 'community owned? enterprises and pressures on business to become more 'socially responsible'. The study will produce data of vital importance to informed policy making and to the effectiveness of philanthropic foundations.
Funding Period: 2002 - 2004
Investigators: Prof WS Logan, Mr JD Sweet, Ms KF Altenburg, Adj/Prof SM Sullivan
Industry Partner(s): Sullivan Blazejowski & Associates, Cultural Heritage Conservation
Australian Heritage Commission/Dept of the Environment & Heritage
Summary: The Nara Document 1994 asserts that East Asians see 'cultural heritage' differently from Westerners and that conservation practice should reflect the culture in which it takes place. Given Australia's growing tourism links with China, and China's growing importance in the Asia-Pacific, it is timely to reflect on the Chinese understanding of cultural heritage. Conversely China's relatively new cultural heritage industry can learn from Australian practice. This project aims at better mutual understanding by researching key issues of site significance, management and interpretation. The research will fill a gap in the literature and provide a model for further cross-cultural heritage analysis.
Funding Period: 2002 - 2004
Investigators: Dr F Mansouri, Dr SM Kenny, Dr KM Brown, Ms DE Smiley
Industry Partner(s): Victorian Arabic Social Services (VASS)
Summary: This project will investigate the contribution of a community association providing humanitarian assistance to newly-arrived refugees holding Temporary Protection Visas (TPV). The project will assess the capacity of non-government organizations (NGOs) in delivering basic social services and identifying areas of immediate concern. The anticipated outcomes of the project are: (a) the establishment of effective models of best practice in the delivery of social services by a NGO, (b) the potential for partnership between such an organization and the State in developing social policy, and (c) the contribution to theoretical examination of the role of civil society in the new Globalisation era.
