Research
Deakin University
Faculty of Arts
School of Communication and Creative Arts
School of Social and International Studies
Faculty of Business and Law
School of Accounting and FinanceFaculty of Education
School of Scientific and Development Studies
School of Social and Cultural StudiesFaculty of Health and Behavioural Science
School of Health Sciences
School of PsychologyFaculty of Science and Technology
School of Biological and Chemical Sciences
School of Ecology and Environment
School of Engineering and Technology
School of Information Technology
Title: Capacity-building in Indonesian Islamic NGOs
Dr GJ Barton, A/Prof SM Kenny
2004 : $40,000
2005 : $50,000
2006 : $50,000
2007 : $60,000
Category: 3701 - SOCIOLOGY
Summary: This study aims to
understand and monitor forms and applications of capacity-building in progressive
Islamic/Muslim NGOs in Indonesia, over a four year period, in the context of
profound social, economic and political change, in order to better understand
how best to strengthen such groups and to assist them to become more effective.
It will significantly increase our understanding of the complex cultural issues
that influence these groups in their efforts to professionalise, build capacity
and contribute to civil society. It will identify areas in which Western misunderstandings
of Muslim culture and society have limited the effectiveness of capacity building
programs.
Title: Labour Matters: The Recomposition of Trade Union Action in a Globalising Era: Australia and Canada1983-2003
Prof C Lipsig-Mumme, A/Prof LI Hancock, Dr JD Buchanan, A/Prof R Lambert, Prof S McBride
2004 : $45,000
2005 : $40,000
2006 : $40,000
Category: 3502 - BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
Administering Institution: Monash University
Summary: Trade unions are
struggling to craft innovative responses to globalisation's pressures, while
seeking to shore up their traditional role in 'porous' national economies. We
compare Australia with Canada 1983-2003: semi-peripheral countries facing similar
pressures from globalisation, but responding differently in governance and trade
union action. Labour innovation is set against the backdrop of changes in employment
regulation and employment security. We examine innovation through national and
transnational union campaigns that parallel in two countries, to evaluate innovation
in Australia. Postgraduate research training in internationally comparative
social science methodology is provided and results disseminated in academic,
practitioner and public fora.
Title: Spaces of Becoming: Spatial Strategies and the Formation of Modern Identities in Urban South Asia
Dr S Srivastava
2004 : $35,000
2005 : $52,000
2006 : $31,000
Category: 3703 - ANTHROPOLOGY
Summary: The intensification
of urbanisation in South Asia calls for new ways of understanding the politics
of identity, and social complexity. This project will explore ways in which
urban spaces (such as places of worship, streetscapes, markets, festival grounds,
procession routes, and 'neighbourhoods') are used by different groups as a fundamental
principle of organising social relations, including transmission of culture
and creation of identity. This interdisciplinary project argues that historicism
- an exclusive temporal emphasis - can not capture the fundamental relationship
between spaces and social processes that shapes contemporary cultural and social
complexity in South Asia.
Title: Australian Literature and the Sacred: Contesting the Myth of Australian Secularism
Dr LM McCredden, Dr FM Devlin-Glass, A/Prof BD Ashcroft
2004 : $24,000
2005 : $23,906
2006 : $25,283
2007 : $24,000 (54% of request)
Category: 4202 - LITERATURE STUDIES
Summary: The dominant myth of Australian culture has stressed its modern, post-religious secularism. This project, focusing on Australian literature since 1940, challenges this most tenacious myth, current in the wider culture and in Australian literary scholarship. It will investigate how the contemporary sacred is transforming in the context of urgent recent claims to the sacred by indigenous peoples, migrants and women. This project will redefine and systematize what sacredness might mean in a supposedly secular Australian culture. It will produce a new model of the sacred in Australian literary history and make significant interventions in post-colonial debates
Title: A Longitudinal Study of Recurrent Audit Failure in Australian Corporate Collapses from 1885 to the present
Prof GD Carnegie, A/Prof B O'Connell
2004 : $45,000
2005 : $50,000
Category: 3501 - ACCOUNTING, AUDITING AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Summary: As starkly illustrated with Enron in the US and with HIH in Australia, corporate collapse and audit failure may be interrelated. In response to repeated instances of audit failure, legislative and other reforms are typically adopted in order to ensure that auditor indiscretions are curtailed. Unfortunately, audit failure persists. This longitudinal Australian study of audit failure in the context of corporate collapse from the mid 1880s aims to enhance an understanding of audit failure and why it recurs. The study's findings are expected to inform future enquires and court cases and assist in developing public policy and future legislative reforms.
Title: Maximising Success in Mathematics for Disadvantaged Students
Prof PA Sullivan, Ms JA Mousley, Prof RL Zevenbergen
2004 : $50,000
2005 : $60,000
2006 : $60,000
Category: 3302 - CURRICULUM STUDIES
Administering Institution: La Trobe University
Summary: This project aims
to identify strategies that teachers can use to overcome the obvious disadvantage
some school students experience in learning mathematics. Currently working class
and Indigenous students in Australian schools are performing very much worse
than their peers in mathematics. Some currently recommended teaching strategies
may be actually exacerbating this disadvantage. This project will identify the
factors contributing to the lack of success of these students, and offer strategies
that teachers can use to ensure that students from disadvantaged backgrounds
have the same opportunities to learn mathematics as other students.
Title: Indigenous Teachers: Understanding their Professional Pathways and Career Experiences
Dr N Santoro, A/Prof J Reid, Dr C McConaghy
2004 : $65,000
2005 : $45,000
2006 : $42,000
2007 : $43,000
Category: 3303 - PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHERS
Summary: There is an urgent need to understand the nature of the professional experience of Indigenous teachers in Australian schools. This project will produce significant new knowledge about the career experiences of former and current Indigenous educators, about the prior life experience of Indigenous teachers beginning their careers in NSW and Victorian schools, and in-depth case studies of their first three years as teachers. It will provide vital information for state and federal education and teacher education policy formation, contribute to social theory with regard to institutional racism, 'whiteness' and Australian education and advance methodologies for research about Indigenous issues.
Title: Personal and environmental influences on changes in adolescents' food consumption behaviours
Dr DA Crawford, Prof A Worsley
2004 : $85,000
2005 : $85,000
2006 : $85,000
2007 : $43,000
Category: 3212 - PUBLIC HEALTH AND HEALTH SERVICES
Summary: This project will track the eating behaviours of two groups of randomly selected adolescents between the ages of 12 and 16 years, for three years. The aims are to assess the changes that occur in their eating behaviour and to examine the influence of family, school, mass media and intrapersonal variables during this period so that predictive models can be built. This will facilitate the implementation of life skills education and the prevention of obesity, non-communicable diseases and nutrient deficiencies.
Title: Intracellular localisation of insulin signalling
proteins in human skeletal muscle following exercise
Dr KF Howlett, Prof M Hargreaves
2004 : $55,000
2005 : $55,000
2006 : $55,000 (87% of request)
Category: 2701 - BIOCHEMISTRY
AND CELL BIOLOGY
Summary: The metabolic action of insulin in skeletal muscle
is enhanced by exercise, but the underlying mechanisms mediating this are unknown.
Insulin receptor substrate proteins are key mediators in the intracellular insulin
signalling pathway and play a central role in regulating many metabolic events.
Our aim is to examine the hypothesis that exercise induces a novel subcellular
redistribution of these insulin receptor substrate proteins in skeletal muscle,
such that the metabolic action of insulin is enhanced. Elucidating the mechanisms
whereby exercise enhances insulin action underpins the development of new treatments
and therapies with the aim of improving skeletal muscle function in health and
disease.
Title: Regulatory mechanisms in skeletal muscle lipid hydrolysis
A/Prof MA Febbraio, Prof M Hargreaves, Dr MJ Watt, Prof LL Spriet
2004 : $75,000
2005 : $75,000
2006 : $75,000
Category: 2701 - BIOCHEMISTRY AND CELL BIOLOGY
Administering Institution: RMIT University
Summary: The regulation of
intramuscular triglyceride (fat) utilisation by human skeletal muscle is largely
unknown. Our contention is that the specialized protein enzyme, hormone sensitive
lipase (HSL), has a fundamental role in intramuscular triacylglycerol utilisation
and is regulated by both intramuscular levels of key metabolites and circulating
hormone concentrations. We also propose control points subsequent to HSL activation
are important for triglyceride hydrolysis. Our proposed project examines these
factors and will enhance our understanding of the regulation of muscle fat use,
thereby leading to potential metabolic strategies (nutritional, pharmacological)
that enhance skeletal muscle function at rest and during exercise.
Title: The etiology of social anxiety and its impact on development across the lifespan
Dr KA Moore, Dr DJ Mellor
2004 : $40,000
2005 : $40,000 (50% of request – 2 instead of 3 yrs)
Category: 3801 - PSYCHOLOGY
Summary: Social anxiety is a distressing early-onset disorder often associated with other psychiatric conditions in later life. This study will extend our previous work that has identified factors associated with its onset. We propose that these factors and the social anxiety itself may disrupt psychosocial development, at the time of onset, and throughout the lifespan. We aim to investigate these innovative hypotheses through a sequence of three studies, with adults, children and adolescents. The results will inform prevention and early intervention regimes, thereby reducing both the incidence of social anxiety and the burden of the disorder.
Title: Bacterial Cell Division: Discovering how it begins and the network of protein interactions it requires
Dr EJ Harry, Prof J Errington, Dr PL Beech, Prof D Ehrlich
2004 : $100,000
2005 : $100,000
2006 : $100,000
Category: 2703 - MICROBIOLOGY
Administering Institution: The University of Sydney
Summary: All cells must coordinate
cell division with chromosome replication to ensure that the DNA is partitioned
equally into newborn cells. We will establish the defect of a novel mutant blocked
in the earliest stage of cell division in bacteria to obtain unique information
about this vital regulatory step. We will use our newly discovered protein interaction
network to establish what role protein interactions play in integrating cell
division with other biological pathways in the cell to ensure its tight regulation.
Our discoveries will facilitate the design of new antibiotics that target cell
division to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria and bioterrorism organisms.
Title: Late palaeozoic palaeogeography of Central Asia: A palaeobiogeographical approach using improved biostratigraphy
Dr ZQ Chen
2004 : $70,000
2005 : $70,000
2006 : $70,000
Category: 2601 - GEOLOGY
Summary: Fossil data from
Central Asia (Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, NW China, Mongolia, Altaids)
indicate significant degree of palaeo-latitudinal variation in biogeographical
patterns across the Palaeo-Tethys and its flanking shelves during Late Palaeozoic,
but details of these patterns and implications for enhancing contemporaneous
palaeogeographical models are virtually unknown. This project will analyse the
biogeographical patterns of Late Palaeozoic brachiopod, coral, fusulinid faunas
using advanced statistical methods, and integrate biogeographical signals with
palaeomagnetic data to constrain models for the Late Palaeozoic geological evolution
of Central Asia-a vast region that is known to bear enormous potential for natural
resources but remains geologically little explored.
Title: Refining Restoration Ecology: Is Range of Historical Variability an appropriate concept to guide ecosystem management and restoration?
Dr ID Lunt, Dr A Bennett, Dr I Oliver
2004 : $50,000
Category: 2707 - ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Administering Institution: Charles Sturt University
Summary: Ecosystem restoration
is an urgent task in many Australian landscapes. Range of Historical Variability
(RHV) theory provides an influential but largely untested framework to guide
restoration activities. We will test the RHV proposition that biodiversity conservation
is enhanced if the structure of altered ecosystems is restored within the pre-settlement
range. Plants, vertebratesand invertebrates will be compared between unrestored
Callitris woodlands dominated by post-settlement regrowth, and restored stands
where regrowth has been reduced within the RHV. This will be the first test
of RHV theory to encompass a range of taxonomic and functional groups at both
local and landscape scales.
Title: Modelling twinning transitions in light metals: a new foundation for alloy and process development
Dr MR Barnett
2004 : $117,000
2005 : $117,000
2006 : $117,000
2007 : $117,000
2008 : $117,000
Category: 2913 - METALLURGY
Summary: Australia’s
quest to become a world leader in light metals technology is being held back
by a lack of quantitative understanding of the metallurgical behaviour of magnesium,
which is the lightest engineering metal, and titanium, which is the strongest
light metal. In particular, there is poor knowledge of the influence of material
parameters on deformation twinning. This knowledge is vital for efficient production
and optimised alloy and part design. This proposal aims to develop a quantitative
understanding oftransitions in twinning activation for improved performance
in fatigue, crash behaviour, structural integrity, forming, forging, extruding,
hot rolling and annealing.
Title: Developing Intelligent Systems for Manufacturing Control
Dr Y Frayman, Dr BF Rolfe
2004 : $60,000
2005 : $60,000
2006 : $60,000
Category: 2903 - MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING
Summary: The primary aim of
this project is to develop control systems that interactively learn from the
environment to increase the capabilities and performance of manufacturing processes.
To achieve this we propose to develop manufacturing control systems that can
automatically adapt to the changes in the process under control. Since these
systems are expected to operate with limited or no human intervention, they
need to be intelligent enough to be able to learn from a changing environment
and adapt correspondingly in order to achieve and maintain performance objectives.
Title: The development of optimum microstructures in hot worked metals
Prof PD Hodgson, Dr MR Barnett, Prof JH Beynon, Prof WM Rainforth
2004 : $75,000
2005 : $75,000
2006 : $80,000
Category: 2913 - METALLURGY
Summary: Hot working is used
to obtain the shape and properties of a wide range of metal products. At present
our knowledge of how to control the forming process and properties of the final
product is limited to laboratory conditions that do not apply in industry. This
work will systematically study the deformation behaviour of a range of metals,
including steel, titanium, aluminium, magnesium and copper from standard laboratory
to real industrial conditions. We will develop advanced models to predict the
properties of these metals for any hot working process and identify opportunities
to develop new high strength products.
Title: A Model for IT Security Outsourcing of Critical Services
A/Prof MJ Warren A/Prof WE Hutchinson
2004 : $40,000
2005 : $40,000 (89% of request)
Category: 2801 - INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Summary: IT security outsourcing is the establishment of a contractual relationship with an outside vendor to assume responsibility for one or more security functions. The decision-making process associated with outsourcing security is complex. To improve the effectiveness of the decision-making process a conceptual model that integrates security benefits, costs and their respective performance measures will be developed. This model will support management in their aim of overseeing IT security effectively. The research will make a valuable contribution towards determining the impact of IT security outsourcing within Australia.
