Globalisation, photography, and race: the circulation and return of Aboriginal photographs in Europe. In the digital age, it has become an urgent matter to understand and balance the role of photographs of Aboriginal people within Indigenous and Western knowledge systems. This project explores their important global historical role, current meanings for descendants, and returns this significant Indigenous heritage from European collections.
Bauhaus Australia: Transforming Education in Art, Architecture and Design. This project aims to examine the influence of Bauhaus-inspired émigrés on Australian cultural life. An under-examined but profound influence on Australian cultural history was the forced migration of émigré and refugee modernists from Germany and central Europe, who transformed art, architectural and design education from the 1930s to the 1970s. German and central European training, inspired by the Bauhaus, centred on sys ....Bauhaus Australia: Transforming Education in Art, Architecture and Design. This project aims to examine the influence of Bauhaus-inspired émigrés on Australian cultural life. An under-examined but profound influence on Australian cultural history was the forced migration of émigré and refugee modernists from Germany and central Europe, who transformed art, architectural and design education from the 1930s to the 1970s. German and central European training, inspired by the Bauhaus, centred on systematic approaches to pictorial method and design, colour theory and art education, all underwritten by an all-encompassing social ambition. This project aims to provide a new cross-disciplinary history of modernism in Australia that shifts focus from solo contributions to the networks of education, where modernism’s impact was most public, widespread and influential.Read moreRead less
The Burden of Freedom? Aboriginal Exemption Policies in Australia. This project aims to be the first major study of the clauses in Aboriginal Protection Acts that allowed Aborigines to be released from control by the government; these are also known as exemption policies. By examining rich and underutilised government archives, it aims to provide a nuanced account of how Aboriginal people negotiated the pressures and possibilities of assimilation from 1897 to 1967. At the same time, it aims to r ....The Burden of Freedom? Aboriginal Exemption Policies in Australia. This project aims to be the first major study of the clauses in Aboriginal Protection Acts that allowed Aborigines to be released from control by the government; these are also known as exemption policies. By examining rich and underutilised government archives, it aims to provide a nuanced account of how Aboriginal people negotiated the pressures and possibilities of assimilation from 1897 to 1967. At the same time, it aims to reveal how non-Aboriginal Australians imagined Aborigines becoming equal citizens. More generally, this study is expected to advance scholarly knowledge of the intricate workings and development of assimilation policy and enable a new reckoning of the legacy and practice of assimilation.Read moreRead less
Land and life: Aborigines, convicts and immigrants in Victoria, 1835-1985: an interdisciplinary history. This project is an interdisciplinary investigation of dispossession and colonization of southeast Australia. It uses longitudinal cohort studies to produce new findings on the impact of stress, dislocation and economic change on individuals and families across five generations.
Designing Australian schools: a spatial history of innovation, pedagogy and social change. This project will provide understanding of the design, educational and environmental motivations underpinning modern Australian schools in the twentieth-century, thus informing current ideas about the school as a centre of the broader social and local community fabric.
Architecture and industry: the migrant contribution to nation-building. This project aims to explore the post-war architectural, rural and industrial landscapes of Australia as shaped by the labour of displaced persons. Migrants after the Second World War were critical to the spatial making of modern Australia. Major federally-funded industries driving post-war nation-building programs depended on the employment of large numbers of war-displaced persons. While the immigrant contribution to natio ....Architecture and industry: the migrant contribution to nation-building. This project aims to explore the post-war architectural, rural and industrial landscapes of Australia as shaped by the labour of displaced persons. Migrants after the Second World War were critical to the spatial making of modern Australia. Major federally-funded industries driving post-war nation-building programs depended on the employment of large numbers of war-displaced persons. While the immigrant contribution to nation-building in cultural terms is well-known, its everyday spatial, architectural and landscape transformations remain unexamined. This project aims to bring to the foreground post-war industry and immigration to comprehensively document a how Australia has uniquely shaped its built environment.Read moreRead less
Rediscovering Aboriginal dispersal pathways. This project aims to use cutting-edge and transdisciplinary tools in partnership with Aboriginal people to rediscover deliberate prehistoric plant dispersal pathways along the Australian east coast. By working on three unrelated species with similar disjunct distributions, expected outcomes include detecting significant ‘cultural’ vegetation patterns that will challenge current assumptions about 'natural' plant distributions. New associations between ....Rediscovering Aboriginal dispersal pathways. This project aims to use cutting-edge and transdisciplinary tools in partnership with Aboriginal people to rediscover deliberate prehistoric plant dispersal pathways along the Australian east coast. By working on three unrelated species with similar disjunct distributions, expected outcomes include detecting significant ‘cultural’ vegetation patterns that will challenge current assumptions about 'natural' plant distributions. New associations between plant biogeography and deliberate Aboriginal manipulation of Australian environments will benefit cultural heritage, land management and restoration initiatives.Read moreRead less
An international history of Australian democracy: the impact of Australian innovation overseas and of international human rights in Australia. This project will chart the international career of Australian democracy and the impact of innovations such as manhood suffrage, the Australian ballot, women's rights and industrial arbitration overseas. It will also investigate the impact of new international definitions of human rights on re-shaping Australian democracy after World War Two.
Exhibitionism: codifying and communicating planning culture in Australia 1913-1951. This project will illuminate the emergence of Australian urban planning in the early 20th century through the novel lens of major community exhibitions. The focus is on the staging, content, outcomes, significance and latter-day lessons of these highly visual exhibitions in shaping and communicating an understanding of planning values.
Making torture unthinkable': the international campaign against torture, 1967-1984. How did human rights become such a pervasive global language today, and how has it shaped what states do? This project argues that a movement against torture in the 1970s and 1980s played a key role in shifting global attitudes and creating our current understanding of human rights, and provides the first analysis of how this came to be.