Profit and Loss: The commercial trade in Indigenous human remains. This project will be the first to investigate the global commercial trade in Indigenous human remains. It will employ a multi-disciplinary approach involving history, economic anthropology, economic history, and data science. The project will generate new knowledge about the 19th century global marketplace in Australian Indigenous human remains, and will reveal whether and how these are involved in the trade’s modern manifestati ....Profit and Loss: The commercial trade in Indigenous human remains. This project will be the first to investigate the global commercial trade in Indigenous human remains. It will employ a multi-disciplinary approach involving history, economic anthropology, economic history, and data science. The project will generate new knowledge about the 19th century global marketplace in Australian Indigenous human remains, and will reveal whether and how these are involved in the trade’s modern manifestations from 1950 to the present. The project will uncover an unknown history, assist repatriation practice, provide information to help reduce the modern trade, and contribute to truth-telling as a precondition of healing and reconciliation.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE200101479
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$424,813.00
Summary
The Sounds of Time. In our age of rapid technological acceleration, understanding how time shapes social life and cultural production is an urgent task. This project aims to write an important new chapter in time’s history from the origins of the mechanical musical clock in fourteenth-century Europe to the spread of European time across the world by missionaries in the sixteenth century. Traversing histories of science, religion, and time, the project expects to be the first sonic history of tim ....The Sounds of Time. In our age of rapid technological acceleration, understanding how time shapes social life and cultural production is an urgent task. This project aims to write an important new chapter in time’s history from the origins of the mechanical musical clock in fourteenth-century Europe to the spread of European time across the world by missionaries in the sixteenth century. Traversing histories of science, religion, and time, the project expects to be the first sonic history of time, and to develop innovative transdisciplinary approaches to the global history of material culture. It aims to benefit Australian culture by providing a richer history of the origins of time measurement, opening up alternative visions of how we might live in time now.Read moreRead less
Shop Talk: Department Stores, Shoppers and Consumer Capitalism, 1945-2025. This project aims to provide a deeper understanding of shopping and its significance in everyday Australian life by using oral history interviews with shoppers, workers and managers who have engaged with department stores since 1945. This project expects to produce the first history of the country’s post-war department stores. Expected outcomes include new, more nuanced perspectives of shopping and the challenges affectin ....Shop Talk: Department Stores, Shoppers and Consumer Capitalism, 1945-2025. This project aims to provide a deeper understanding of shopping and its significance in everyday Australian life by using oral history interviews with shoppers, workers and managers who have engaged with department stores since 1945. This project expects to produce the first history of the country’s post-war department stores. Expected outcomes include new, more nuanced perspectives of shopping and the challenges affecting the retail sector via a range of publications, international collaborations, and an archive of oral history recordings. This should provide significant benefits to researchers examining the retail sector, to Australians working in retail, and to ordinary Australians, whose stories will be placed on the historical record.Read moreRead less
The refugee legacy for second generation Vietnamese in Australia. This project aims to explore the refugee legacy for second generation Vietnamese in Australia. The first Vietnamese refugees arrived 41 years ago in the wake of the Vietnam War. This project will examine identity formation, secondary trauma, and linguistic and cultural interactions in the aftermath of war and the refugee experience, and analyse the achievements and challenges of this group. The expected outcomes are a major study ....The refugee legacy for second generation Vietnamese in Australia. This project aims to explore the refugee legacy for second generation Vietnamese in Australia. The first Vietnamese refugees arrived 41 years ago in the wake of the Vietnam War. This project will examine identity formation, secondary trauma, and linguistic and cultural interactions in the aftermath of war and the refugee experience, and analyse the achievements and challenges of this group. The expected outcomes are a major study of Vietnamese in Australia and a national oral history collection.Read moreRead less
Australian Laureate Fellowships - Grant ID: FL190100161
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$2,944,438.00
Summary
Global Encounters & First Nations Peoples: 1000 Years of Australian History. This fellowship aims to examine one thousand years of dynamic encounters between Australia’s Indigenous peoples and voyagers from the sea. The project expects to use an interdisciplinary, multilingual team to generate new understandings by synthesising historical, archaeological, anthropological and linguistic sources from Australian and European collections. Expected outcomes include an innovative reconstruction of Aus ....Global Encounters & First Nations Peoples: 1000 Years of Australian History. This fellowship aims to examine one thousand years of dynamic encounters between Australia’s Indigenous peoples and voyagers from the sea. The project expects to use an interdisciplinary, multilingual team to generate new understandings by synthesising historical, archaeological, anthropological and linguistic sources from Australian and European collections. Expected outcomes include an innovative reconstruction of Australia’s role in global exploration, enduring international collaborations, and a massive open, interactive and translated database. This should provide significant benefits, creating a new transdisciplinary intellectual school, with the potential to recast Australia’s history, national identity, and place in the world.Read moreRead less
Healing Land Healing People: Novel Nyungar Perspectives . This project aims to investigate means of biodiversity conservation and human resilience in a global hotspot by advancing collaborations between Aboriginal environmental and cultural knowledges and Western science and humanities. The project will generate new strategies to slow decline of biodiversity in the Southwest Australian Floristic Region, and help build Aboriginal resilience by exploring innovative techniques to restore narrative ....Healing Land Healing People: Novel Nyungar Perspectives . This project aims to investigate means of biodiversity conservation and human resilience in a global hotspot by advancing collaborations between Aboriginal environmental and cultural knowledges and Western science and humanities. The project will generate new strategies to slow decline of biodiversity in the Southwest Australian Floristic Region, and help build Aboriginal resilience by exploring innovative techniques to restore narratives of local life styles to Dryandra Woodland history. Expected outcomes include enhanced sustainability of environment and culture and new theories and assessment models. This should provide significant benefits for Aboriginal well-being, national reconciliation and for coping with global climate change.
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Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE210101348
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$369,913.00
Summary
Melting Futures: An Environmental History of the Himalayan Cryosphere. The Himalaya’s cryosphere (or frozen realm) has underpinned Monsoonal Asia’s climate and water supply for millennia, and now it is disappearing. This project forecasts the Himalaya’s melting future by documenting how its ice has shaped Asia’s past and produced its present. Focusing on the period since the end of the Little Ice Age (the mid-1800s), it investigates the climatic, cultural and geopolitical causes of ice loss, and ....Melting Futures: An Environmental History of the Himalayan Cryosphere. The Himalaya’s cryosphere (or frozen realm) has underpinned Monsoonal Asia’s climate and water supply for millennia, and now it is disappearing. This project forecasts the Himalaya’s melting future by documenting how its ice has shaped Asia’s past and produced its present. Focusing on the period since the end of the Little Ice Age (the mid-1800s), it investigates the climatic, cultural and geopolitical causes of ice loss, and asks how they have influenced and intensified each other. The project’s multifaceted approach to the cryosphere challenges the current fragmented debates on the melting ice, and will, therefore, generate improvements in cryosphere management.Read moreRead less
Protecting non-citizens: An Australian legal and political history, 1945-89. This project seeks to investigate Australia’s contribution to international law relating to the protection of non-citizens, and the impact such law has on government policy and administrative practice. The protection needs of millions of people who are de jure or de facto stateless have presented a seemingly intractable global challenge for close to a century. This project aims to analyse Australia’s response to that ch ....Protecting non-citizens: An Australian legal and political history, 1945-89. This project seeks to investigate Australia’s contribution to international law relating to the protection of non-citizens, and the impact such law has on government policy and administrative practice. The protection needs of millions of people who are de jure or de facto stateless have presented a seemingly intractable global challenge for close to a century. This project aims to analyse Australia’s response to that challenge. Using legal and historical methodology, this project plans to investigate Australia's contribution to international discussions about the right and/or duty of states to provide surrogate protection to non-citizens. It also plans to analyse the impact of emerging international legal norms on Australian asylum seeker policy and practice, and the conflicting interests within government that informed policy decisions.Read moreRead less
Ancestors' words: Noongar writing in WA government archives (1860-1960s). This project aims to produce the first account of Noongar letter writing in Western Australian archives from 1860 to 1960. The project’s significance lies in revealing this hidden activism in the archive, restoring silenced Noongar stories to the documents, advancing scholarly understanding, and promoting decolonisation of the Western Australian archive. Expected outcomes include an ethical Noongar research model and commu ....Ancestors' words: Noongar writing in WA government archives (1860-1960s). This project aims to produce the first account of Noongar letter writing in Western Australian archives from 1860 to 1960. The project’s significance lies in revealing this hidden activism in the archive, restoring silenced Noongar stories to the documents, advancing scholarly understanding, and promoting decolonisation of the Western Australian archive. Expected outcomes include an ethical Noongar research model and community research knowledge space developed with Noongar leaders. This new evidence of Noongar political agency could benefit sustainability for the emerging Noongar nation and advance equity and reconciliation for all citizens of the Australian settler nation and advocacy for Indigenous rights internationally.Read moreRead less
Mobilising Aboriginal objects: Indigenous history in international museums . The project aims to build knowledge about exceptional, but poorly-documented, Aboriginal objects from Sydney and NSW coast (c. 1770-1920s) in British and European museums. These objects have not been accessible to Aboriginal communities and other researchers. This project proposes a major innovation: to bring objects to Sydney for community-led and interdisciplinary interpretation. Outcomes will include strong relations ....Mobilising Aboriginal objects: Indigenous history in international museums . The project aims to build knowledge about exceptional, but poorly-documented, Aboriginal objects from Sydney and NSW coast (c. 1770-1920s) in British and European museums. These objects have not been accessible to Aboriginal communities and other researchers. This project proposes a major innovation: to bring objects to Sydney for community-led and interdisciplinary interpretation. Outcomes will include strong relations between Aboriginal communities and overseas museums; a model for collaborative research about historic objects; and a material history of Aboriginal/colonial relations. It benefits communities, governments and museums by laying robust foundations for future projects seeking the return of Indigenous cultural heritage.
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