HDR Scholarship - Digital Child

School

Faculty

Location

Melbourne Burwood Campus or Geelong Waurn Ponds Campus

Research topic

We are currently seeking expressions of interest for three students to undertake research at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, based at the Centre’s Deakin University node.

About the Centre:

The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child is the world’s first research centre dedicated to creating positive digital childhoods for all Australian children.

Led by and headquartered at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, the Centre comprises researchers from six Australian universities, including Deakin University. The Centre’s research innovates and intersects across a range of cross-disciplinary projects, all connected, providing evidence focused on three key areas – Healthy Child, Educated Child and Connected Child. The heart of the Centre’s research program is its Longitudinal Family Study – a seven-year study of 3000 Australian families, focusing on children from birth to eight years of age.

Scholarship opportunity:

The scholarships are a unique opportunity for students to be involved in research that will contribute to an innovative body of knowledge on children’s digital experiences, working with supervisors who are leaders in their field to develop their research practice.

The Deakin node of the Centre sits within the Strategic Research Centre in Education, Research for Educational Impact (REDI), located in the School of Education at Deakin University. Embedded in the Deakin node, the successful candidates will benefit from a research intensive and collegial environment.

Project aim

There are three scholarships available, one for each research area outlined below.

Data and datafication and digital childhood - exploring how datafication takes place in the context of children's lives; and/or is experienced and understood by young children and their families; and/or the role of companies and institutions in datafication.
Digital play – exploring children’s digital play in the home and education settings; and/or the ways in which families, educators and peers engage with digital play with children; and/or the affordances of digital play in supporting children’s communication and language.
Platforms and political economy of digital childhood - exploring the role of digital platforms in the lives of young children and their families; and/or how political economy theories and approaches can be applied to aspects of ‘digital childhood’; and/or how aspects of commercialisation of childhood take place on or through digital technologies and their platforms.

Research project proposals are to fall under one of these three areas.

Projects to be supervised by one or more of the Centre’s Chief Investigators at Deakin University –

The supervisory team will include:

Dr Maria Nicholas
Dr Kate Mannell
Dr Xinyu (Andy) Zhao
Dr Sarah Healy

Important dates

Applications will remain open until a candidate has been appointed

Benefits

This scholarship is available over 3 years.

Stipend of $34,880 per annum tax exempt

Eligibility criteria

To be eligible you must:

be a domestic candidate or international candidate. Domestic includes candidates with Australian Citizenship, Australian Permanent Residency or New Zealand Citizenship.
meet Deakin's PhD entry requirements
be enrolling full time or part time and hold an honours degree (first class) or an equivalent standard master's degree with a substantial research component.

Please refer to the research degree entry pathways page for further information.