Connecting Indigenous Community Photographies: a transnational case study. The project aims to conduct the first transnational comparison of Indigenous community-controlled photography, exploring Indigenous peoples’ ways of seeing and documenting their worlds. The project seeks to significantly advance Australian and global understanding of Indigenous vernacular photography through investigating formerly unexplored private collections of images created by Indigenous photographers during the mid ....Connecting Indigenous Community Photographies: a transnational case study. The project aims to conduct the first transnational comparison of Indigenous community-controlled photography, exploring Indigenous peoples’ ways of seeing and documenting their worlds. The project seeks to significantly advance Australian and global understanding of Indigenous vernacular photography through investigating formerly unexplored private collections of images created by Indigenous photographers during the mid 20th Century in four communities across three countries. One of the outcomes of the project is a nuanced visual history that cannot be excavated from other sources. The benefits of this project include public exhibitions, a book, symposiums, and a scholarly anthology that encourages the public’s connection with the past.Read moreRead less
Interrogating the music city: cultural economy & popular music in Melbourne. Drawing on a range of sources and disciplinary frameworks, this project is designed to be both a history of the pop and rock music scenes in Melbourne from the mid-1950s to the present, and an analysis and critique of the usefulness of the concept of the 'music city' to understanding the role of popular music in the cultural economy of cities internationally. Melbourne is Australia’s premier ‘music city’, with popular m ....Interrogating the music city: cultural economy & popular music in Melbourne. Drawing on a range of sources and disciplinary frameworks, this project is designed to be both a history of the pop and rock music scenes in Melbourne from the mid-1950s to the present, and an analysis and critique of the usefulness of the concept of the 'music city' to understanding the role of popular music in the cultural economy of cities internationally. Melbourne is Australia’s premier ‘music city’, with popular music a key component of its contemporary identity and cultural economy. As governments and civic leaders around the world increasingly look to music cultures as drivers of economic development and cultural status, the project offers a timely evaluation of the utility of this cultural and economic strategy.Read moreRead less
Local Remembering and National Forgetting: Memory Politics in Modern China. This project aims to explore the politics of local remembering and national forgetting, and their roles in shaping state-society relationships in modern China. The project expects to generate new insights into key narratives of China’s recent past, and how they are recast by local museums to counter official discourses that elevate certain memories and suppress others. Expected outcomes include enhancing theoretical and ....Local Remembering and National Forgetting: Memory Politics in Modern China. This project aims to explore the politics of local remembering and national forgetting, and their roles in shaping state-society relationships in modern China. The project expects to generate new insights into key narratives of China’s recent past, and how they are recast by local museums to counter official discourses that elevate certain memories and suppress others. Expected outcomes include enhancing theoretical and empirical knowledge of the roles of heritage and memory in China’s contemporary cultural politics. Significant benefits to Australia will include new knowledge towards a more nuanced and multidimensional understanding of China’s priorities in cultural politics, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.
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Hearing histories of the western Pilbara. This project aims to investigate Indigenous song traditions of the western Pilbara through current practice and legacy recordings. It aims to show how public song traditions were used through the twentieth century as tools to manage environmental change. By recording and documenting songs and histories, and curating and developing an online collection of song-based digital heritage items with a virtual landscape interface, the project is expected to prod ....Hearing histories of the western Pilbara. This project aims to investigate Indigenous song traditions of the western Pilbara through current practice and legacy recordings. It aims to show how public song traditions were used through the twentieth century as tools to manage environmental change. By recording and documenting songs and histories, and curating and developing an online collection of song-based digital heritage items with a virtual landscape interface, the project is expected to produce knowledge about the role of digital collections and cultural mapping in supporting the sustainment of endangered song traditions. It also aims to develop tools for use by communities and researchers to secure legacy, crowd-sourced and newly created records of intangible cultural heritages for the future.Read moreRead less
When do gestures become linguistic? Understanding the gesture-language interface through a corpusbased study of pointing signs in signed languages. This project will use corpus-based and experimental studies to compare pointing signs in three sign languages with pointing gestures used by hearing non-signers in order to answer the question: What relationship do gestures have to language? It will help us understand how pointing works as part of a sign language system, and how it is used as co-spee ....When do gestures become linguistic? Understanding the gesture-language interface through a corpusbased study of pointing signs in signed languages. This project will use corpus-based and experimental studies to compare pointing signs in three sign languages with pointing gestures used by hearing non-signers in order to answer the question: What relationship do gestures have to language? It will help us understand how pointing works as part of a sign language system, and how it is used as co-speech gesture. Both spoken languages and sign languages make use of pointing, and thus it represents a unique case study for the investigation of the relationship between gesture and language. This project will provide a distinctive contribution to our knowledge about the relationship between language and other aspects of human communication. Read moreRead less
Musical resilience within marginal groups in culturally diverse societies. This project aims to examine and compare the music of minorities in one Western and one non-Western culturally diverse society to better understand how certain musics thrive. This project will improve understanding of the musical and social lives of minority communities in culturally diverse societies. By exploring how communities perceive and handle challenges to musical practices, it will expand knowledge of the ways th ....Musical resilience within marginal groups in culturally diverse societies. This project aims to examine and compare the music of minorities in one Western and one non-Western culturally diverse society to better understand how certain musics thrive. This project will improve understanding of the musical and social lives of minority communities in culturally diverse societies. By exploring how communities perceive and handle challenges to musical practices, it will expand knowledge of the ways that music can enhance the lives of minority peoples and our society. The outcomes will include practical guidance that can inform community activities and policy at a range of levels, and benefit society through positive social change.Read moreRead less
Staging Australian Women’s Lives: Theatre, Feminism & Socially Engaged Art. This project aims to address increasing discrimination and violence against Australian women by researching how theatre can be used as a socially-engaged laboratory for understanding and improving their lives. The project seeks to generate new knowledge about how women theatre makers craft creative and effective responses to gender-based inequality and oppression. Expected outcomes include a comprehensive feminist analys ....Staging Australian Women’s Lives: Theatre, Feminism & Socially Engaged Art. This project aims to address increasing discrimination and violence against Australian women by researching how theatre can be used as a socially-engaged laboratory for understanding and improving their lives. The project seeks to generate new knowledge about how women theatre makers craft creative and effective responses to gender-based inequality and oppression. Expected outcomes include a comprehensive feminist analysis and innovative written, digital and performance-based documentation of women's contributions to Australian theatre history and their efforts to address social inequities. It seeks to benefit Australian society by exploring how theatre gives women useful tools for countering inequality and oppression in their own lives.Read moreRead less
Intangible cultural heritage across borders: laws, structures and strategies in China and its Association of Southeast Asian Nations neighbours. This project explores the way selected Asian countries have implemented international concepts regarding intangible cultural heritage and how cross-border conflicts about heritage have resulted from different interpretations of related 'rights'. This project develops proposals for international reconciliation and cooperation in heritage protection.
Hearing the music of early New South Wales, 1788-1860 . This project aims to restore the musical sound world of early New South Wales, from local Aboriginal songs to imported European settler music. It aims to develop new creative research methodologies applicable to the study, teaching and understanding of musical interactions in the early colony. By digitally embedding the recorded outcomes and documentary materials within an accessible web repository, the project aims to disseminate new knowl ....Hearing the music of early New South Wales, 1788-1860 . This project aims to restore the musical sound world of early New South Wales, from local Aboriginal songs to imported European settler music. It aims to develop new creative research methodologies applicable to the study, teaching and understanding of musical interactions in the early colony. By digitally embedding the recorded outcomes and documentary materials within an accessible web repository, the project aims to disseminate new knowledge of musical soundscapes. The project expects to transform the way we talk about and understand the sound worlds of Indigenous and settler musical cultures, with benefits for academic, music professional and amateur researchers.Read moreRead less
Tangsa Wihu song: insight into culture through language, music and ritual. This project seeks to study the complex and under-researched linguistic diversity of the newly opening India–Myanmar borders. The Tangsa Wihu song-cycle is a ritual and poetic tradition common to people in a very linguistically diverse community situated in the India–Myanmar border region. This project plans to study this song-cycle, which was traditionally performed over many hours and days, examining the linguistic, his ....Tangsa Wihu song: insight into culture through language, music and ritual. This project seeks to study the complex and under-researched linguistic diversity of the newly opening India–Myanmar borders. The Tangsa Wihu song-cycle is a ritual and poetic tradition common to people in a very linguistically diverse community situated in the India–Myanmar border region. This project plans to study this song-cycle, which was traditionally performed over many hours and days, examining the linguistic, historical and musicological features of the song in its various contexts. The rich and complex linguistic diversity of Tangsa is shining a light on traditional patterns of human linguistic and social development, and this detailed study is expected to enhance our knowledge of the linguistic and cultural diversity of India and Myanmar.Read moreRead less