The early woman writer, 1530-1660. This project aims to provide a literary history of women’s textual practice in the English Renaissance. This project will examine the scope, content and purpose of early modern women’s writing to make new discoveries about reading, writing and book use in the period when book production and distribution was first appearing on a larger scale. It uses digital technologies to create open-access digital forms of this writing to extend access to it, and also to furt ....The early woman writer, 1530-1660. This project aims to provide a literary history of women’s textual practice in the English Renaissance. This project will examine the scope, content and purpose of early modern women’s writing to make new discoveries about reading, writing and book use in the period when book production and distribution was first appearing on a larger scale. It uses digital technologies to create open-access digital forms of this writing to extend access to it, and also to further Australia’s position in both cutting edge digital scholarship and scholarship on the early modern period.
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Future fables: literature, evolution and artificial intelligence. The future of AI is a site of considerable philosophical and cultural anxiety in the West. Given the future of AI is currently only available to publics through literary or fictional tropes, it is vital that we investigate the historical evolution of these literary or fictional tropes of AI to understand its future direction. This project aims to understand (1) how the post-Darwinian literary imagination has shaped our current anx ....Future fables: literature, evolution and artificial intelligence. The future of AI is a site of considerable philosophical and cultural anxiety in the West. Given the future of AI is currently only available to publics through literary or fictional tropes, it is vital that we investigate the historical evolution of these literary or fictional tropes of AI to understand its future direction. This project aims to understand (1) how the post-Darwinian literary imagination has shaped our current anxieties about AI and (2) how literary and scientific writers after Darwin rethink the future of the human species by imagining the co-evolution of humans, animals and machines. Expected outcomes of the project include conceptual resources to understand the human-nonhuman relation and the future of AI.Read moreRead less
Narrative, Technologies and Wirlomin Moorditj-abiny. The project aims to investigate how digital technologies in combination with on-Country camps may consolidate, enhance and help share a specific Aboriginal heritage.
The project will generate new knowledge by workshopping select archival Noongar language, story and song material with its home community so as to enable an Indigenous-led articulation of identity and belonging.
Expected outcomes include improved cross-generational transmissio ....Narrative, Technologies and Wirlomin Moorditj-abiny. The project aims to investigate how digital technologies in combination with on-Country camps may consolidate, enhance and help share a specific Aboriginal heritage.
The project will generate new knowledge by workshopping select archival Noongar language, story and song material with its home community so as to enable an Indigenous-led articulation of identity and belonging.
Expected outcomes include improved cross-generational transmission, empowerment of the appropriate Noongar community, social cohesion and the generation of transformative narratives as well as publication.
Benefits include community well-being, a potentially refined integration of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, and modelling of Reconciliation strategies.
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Rewriting the Social Contract: Technology, Ecology, Extremism. This project aims to develop a new approach to understanding the purpose and power of social contracts: implicit agreements among members of a society to cooperate for mutual benefit. Australia’s post-war prosperity has relied on a robust social contract, but it is under increasing strain today from new technological, environmental and socio-political realities. Using techniques from philosophy and social theory, this project seeks t ....Rewriting the Social Contract: Technology, Ecology, Extremism. This project aims to develop a new approach to understanding the purpose and power of social contracts: implicit agreements among members of a society to cooperate for mutual benefit. Australia’s post-war prosperity has relied on a robust social contract, but it is under increasing strain today from new technological, environmental and socio-political realities. Using techniques from philosophy and social theory, this project seeks to examine the main pressures on the social contract today, and to propose how it can be reinforced. Intended benefits include strengthening social cohesion through better understanding the causes of reduced wellbeing, social fragmentation and unrest, and through proposing ways to mitigate their costly effects.Read moreRead less
Reading at the interface: literatures, cultures, technologies. This project intends to use massively expanded digital evidence of reception to investigate a central insight of cultural criticism - that meaning is produced through interactions between texts, contexts and readers. The project expects to generate new knowledge of literary culture and digital approaches to research in the humanities. The project will employ new digital evidence and methods to explore general and professional readi ....Reading at the interface: literatures, cultures, technologies. This project intends to use massively expanded digital evidence of reception to investigate a central insight of cultural criticism - that meaning is produced through interactions between texts, contexts and readers. The project expects to generate new knowledge of literary culture and digital approaches to research in the humanities. The project will employ new digital evidence and methods to explore general and professional reading in concert. Mapping the impact of new media on reception of Australian literature should provide significant social and disciplinary benefits in fostering literary research capable of engaging diverse publics and responding effectively to policy demands to demonstrate impact.Read moreRead less
Significances of 'childhood' in postcolonial Australia. This project aims to investigate the rhetorical and political use of the figure of the Aboriginal child as a site of mediation in efforts to reconcile cultural tensions in Australia, particularly between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Utilising an interdisciplinary critical analysis of concepts of childhood, the expected outcomes of the project include enhanced understanding of the specific character of injury inflicted upon Abo ....Significances of 'childhood' in postcolonial Australia. This project aims to investigate the rhetorical and political use of the figure of the Aboriginal child as a site of mediation in efforts to reconcile cultural tensions in Australia, particularly between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Utilising an interdisciplinary critical analysis of concepts of childhood, the expected outcomes of the project include enhanced understanding of the specific character of injury inflicted upon Aboriginal communities through interventions targeting their children, such as their removal into out of home care. This should provide significant benefits to the contemporary social project of reconciliation, through increasing critical attention to the part of cultural misunderstanding in perpetuating Aboriginal disadvantage.Read moreRead less
Enabling Indigenous and Country-led understandings of sovereignty. The project aims to transform understandings of sovereignty from a concept to a series of practices by which pluralistic authority is drawn from intimate human and non-human relationships. It will collaboratively facilitate and document ongoing relationships in which Indigenous peoples respond to the active agency of non-human elements. The project will support a series of on-Country workshops and co-author practical resources to ....Enabling Indigenous and Country-led understandings of sovereignty. The project aims to transform understandings of sovereignty from a concept to a series of practices by which pluralistic authority is drawn from intimate human and non-human relationships. It will collaboratively facilitate and document ongoing relationships in which Indigenous peoples respond to the active agency of non-human elements. The project will support a series of on-Country workshops and co-author practical resources to support community-led research. The anticipated goal is to mobilise Indigenous knowledges in Australia to nurture regenerative sovereignties - healing relationships between people and places - with significant implications for our collective response to social and environmental change.Read moreRead less
The Mourning After: Grief, witnessing and mobile media practices. This project aims to understand the role of mobile media in grief rituals as a reflection of our social and cultural lives. Grief is an important cultural practice which is crucial in recovery from loss and developing resilience. As magnified by the pandemic, mobile media rituals—from Instagram memorials to witnessing mass death and online funerals—play a significant role in contemporary grieving processes. Through ethnographic in ....The Mourning After: Grief, witnessing and mobile media practices. This project aims to understand the role of mobile media in grief rituals as a reflection of our social and cultural lives. Grief is an important cultural practice which is crucial in recovery from loss and developing resilience. As magnified by the pandemic, mobile media rituals—from Instagram memorials to witnessing mass death and online funerals—play a significant role in contemporary grieving processes. Through ethnographic inquiry, social media analysis and creative practice intervention, expected outcomes will include codesigned media-in-grief literacy frameworks, online resources and socially-engaged art exhibition. Benefits for understanding grief-in-media include building public empathy, connection and resilience. Read moreRead less
The Cultural Evolution of Mentalising. Thinking about mental states, such as beliefs, desires and intentions, is a universally important human ability known as mentalising. This project aims to use new cross-cultural databases and computational comparative methods to study five ways that mentalising practices vary across world cultures. The findings of this research have the potential to provide the first systematic overview of how mentalising practices vary globally as well as reveal the histor ....The Cultural Evolution of Mentalising. Thinking about mental states, such as beliefs, desires and intentions, is a universally important human ability known as mentalising. This project aims to use new cross-cultural databases and computational comparative methods to study five ways that mentalising practices vary across world cultures. The findings of this research have the potential to provide the first systematic overview of how mentalising practices vary globally as well as reveal the historical and social processes that shape the diverse ways that people think about the mind. Benefits of this knowledge include a more culturally sound basis for future developments in community-focused professions such as education, community development and counselling.Read moreRead less
Categorisation, communication and the local environment. Languages around the world incorporate different systems of categories, and understanding this variation can contribute to a better understanding of similarities and differences between cultures. This project examines how linguistic variation is shaped in part by variation in the local physical and social environment. The methods include computational analyses of large electronic data sets including dictionaries and linguistic corpora tha ....Categorisation, communication and the local environment. Languages around the world incorporate different systems of categories, and understanding this variation can contribute to a better understanding of similarities and differences between cultures. This project examines how linguistic variation is shaped in part by variation in the local physical and social environment. The methods include computational analyses of large electronic data sets including dictionaries and linguistic corpora that have become available only recently, and psychological experiments that probe the causal mechanisms that lead to variation across languages. The outcomes include computational tools that pick out key differences between languages and therefore support cross-cultural communication.Read moreRead less