Research
Deakin University
Faculty of Arts
School of Communication and Creative Arts
School of Social and International StudiesFaculty of Education
School of Scientific and Developmental Studies
Faculty of Health and Behavioural Science
School of PsychologyFaculty of Science and Technology
School of Biological and Chemical Sciences
School of Ecology and Environment
School of Engineering and Technology
Title: Transformative Utopianism: Contemporary Children's Literature Responding to Changing World Orders from Glasnost to 11 September, 2001
A/Prof CM Bradford, Dr R McCallum, Dr KM Mallan,
A/Prof JA Stephens
2003 : $87,000
2004 : $70,000
2005 : $102,000
Category:
4202 - LITERATURE STUDIES
Summary: Political and cultural instabilities and conflicts from 1990 to
the present have profoundly affected children's literature. Works
of fiction in particular have deployed utopian and dystopian tropes
to project possible futures to their implied readers. The project
uses the concept of 'transformative utopianism' to suggest that
these tropes do important social, cultural and political work by
challenging and reformulating ideas about power and identity, community,
the body, spatio-temporal change, and ecology. In this way the project
draws together multiple theoretical interpretations of texts to
demonstrate the responsiveness of children's literature to broader
ideological, social, theoretical and pedagogical contexts.
Title: Science, Knowledge and the Transmission of Psychoanalysis
Dr J Clemens, Dr RA Grigg, Prof H Krips
2003 : $36,000
2004 : $36,000
2005 : $50,000
Category: 3706 - HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
Summary: Psychoanalysis has always wanted to be a science.
From Sigmund Freud to Jacques Lacan, disputes in psychoanalysis have typically
hinged on the question of whether the knowledge produced by psychoanalysis deserves
the appellation scientific. If so, in what way? If not, why not? What sort of
psychoanalytic institution would be adequate to psychoanalysis' scientific claims?
This interdisciplinary project is a historical, critical and constructive examination
of psychoanalytic theory and practice, which re-examines key texts from the
vantage point of the scientific question. Finally, the project will ask what
psychoanalysis can contribute to the understanding of other scientific practices.
Title: The role of public culture in the construction of contemporary
Australian literature
Dr W Ommundsen, Prof MF Meehan, Dr DW Mccooey
2003 : $35,000
2004 : $25,000
2005 : $20,000
Category: 4202 - LITERATURE STUDIES
Summary: Literature is not simply a body of texts; it is a cultural technology,
affected by changing patterns of production and consumption. Witness
the 'cult of celebrity', the phenomenal recent growth of literary
festivals, literary internet sites, reading groups, changing patterns
of literary marketing, education, employment and leisure. Academic
scholarship, largely text-based, fails to engage with these public
and popular phenomena. Our project develops methods for describing
and evaluating how these practices construct literary value and
cultural identity, in ways that will bring academic literary analysis
into a more informed, more creative engagement with public and popular
culture in Australia.
Return to top
Title: Community and Governance; Urban Activism in Melbourne in the 1960s and beyond
A/Prof RT Howe, Prof GJ Davison, Prof WS Logan
2003 : $55,000
2004 : $50,000
Category: 4301 - HISTORICAL STUDIES
Summary: As the economy of Melbourne's central and inner areas has been transformed
over the last three decades, conflicts over urban redevelopment
have impacted significantly on governance, urban policies and inner
city communities. By studying the new generation of activists attracted
to Melbourne's working class suburbs in the 1960s, this project
will push beyond gentrification interpretations of urban change
to examine the motivations of activists and the process of forging
partipatory structures of governance and community partnerships.
The project will assess the significance of this period of transition
for managing urban development in the new millennium.
Title: The political economy of military reform in Indonesia: Opportunities
and challenges for civilian control of the TNI
Dr D Kingsbury, Dr L McCulloch
2003 : $75,000
2004 : $75,000
2005 : $75,000
Category: 3601 - POLITICAL SCIENCE
Summary: Despite Suharto's fall, and limited reform process,
the Indonesian military (TNI) remains deeply involved in Indonesian politics,
at Cabinet level, and in state maintenance. The TNI also has substantial economic
interests, about two-thirds of which is illegal. The TNI is therefore still
central to Indonesia's political processes, and constitutes the major impediment
to Indonesia's democratisation. This project will locate military reform within
a broader Security Sector Reform agenda, assess the likelihood of further voluntary
TNI reform and external reform drivers, and structural problems facing this
process. It will analyse the TNI's reform process, and investigate options for
bilateral reform assistance.
Title: Face to Face with Asia: Australia, the Colombo Plan and the Asian
Engagement Debate, 1950-1975
Dr DM Lowe, Prof DR Walker, Dr CW Waters
2003 : $57,000
2004 : $58,000
2005 : $52,000
Category:
4301 - HISTORICAL STUDIES
Summary: This project will be the first comprehensive study of Australia's
involvement in the Colombo Plan for aid to South and Southeast Asia.
It will examine this involvement as a central part of Australia's
engagement with Asia in the post-war period. It will do so under
three main headings: Australian foreign policy; cultural diplomacy;
and the internationalisation of higher education. The project will
be innovative in bridging the gap between histories of Australian
foreign policy and cultural histories of Australian-Asian relations.
It will provide an excellent foundation for on-going research into
the consequent reconfiguring of our identity as an Asia-Pacific
nation.
Title: Transforming the organisation of schooling: Technology and organisational change in the junior years of secondary school
Dr J Lynch
2003 : $75,000
2004 : $75,000
2005 : $75,000
Category: 3301 - EDUCATION STUDIES
Summary: Qualitative methods will be used to document ruptures in the traditional
organisation of junior secondary schooling and to explore the role
played by information and communication technology (ICT). Literature
on the integration of ICT across the curriculum, generic capabilities
in school-aged learners and the middle years of schooling suggests
that a multi-dimensional construct will be developed, accommodating
changes in the organisation of time, space and knowledge and in
the roles played by teachers, students and parents. An analysis
of the qualitative data will inform the development of a questionnaire
which will then be tested and validated.
Prof MP McCabe, Dr LA Ricciardelli
2003 : $50,000
2004 : $52,000
2005 : $53,000
Category: 3801 - PSYCHOLOGY
Summary: Recent evidence suggests that hazardous body change strategies adopted
by adolescent boys are a major problem. This study validates a biopsychosocial
framework to explain the development of exercise dependence, steroid
and food supplement use, and disordered eating among at risk adolescent
boys. A longitudinal experimental design will be employed. Late
maturing boys, who are also less popular with peers, are expected
to demonstrate high body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem and high
negative affect and maladaptive body change strategies. The result
of this study will inform treatment programs for these behaviours.
Prof BA Kunz, Prof M Ruiz-Rubio, Prof RH Schiestl,
Dr EJ Vonarx
2003 : $65,000
2004 : $65,000
2005 : $65,000
Category: 2701 - BIOCHEMISTRY AND CELL BIOLOGY
Summary: Ultraviolet (UV) radiation induces DNA damage that can decrease
plant growth and productivity. Our aim is to begin deciphering the
mechanisms responsible for the UV resistance phenotype in plants
by: 1) isolating genes that control processing of UV-induced DNA
damage; 2) determining the influence of UV ongene activity; and
3) elucidating the functions and essential interactions of the gene
products. The results of this study will help us understand how
these genes operate to produce the UV resistance phenotype. This
new knowledge will facilitate eventual engineering of plants to
increase agricultural productivity by enhancing resistance to solar
UV radiation.
Dr G Allinson
2003 : $44,000
2004 : $52,000
2005 : $24,000
Category: 2599 - OTHER CHEMICAL SCIENCES
Summary: The fate of endocrine system disrupting chemicals in soils has not
been studied, even though some have been linked to human health
effects. Many are found in municipal sewage wastes. This project
will measure chemical concentrations in water repellent forest plantation
soils irrigated with municipal wastewater. The outcome will be data
specifically addressing (1) the risks when forest plantations are
irrigated with municipal wastewater in Victoria and, by extension
applicable to other Australian ecosystems, (2) Environment Australia's
stated need for information directly applicable to ecosystem and
human health risk assessment of the environmental risks posed by
endocrine disrupting chemicals.
Title: Analysis and Design of Multi-objective Optimal Multirate Filter Banks
Dr J Zhang, A/Prof C Zhang, Prof E Mosca
2003 : $65,000
2004 : $55,250
2005 : $46,963
Category: 2802 - ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND SIGNAL AND IMAGE PROCESSING
Summary: Multirate filter banks are a fundamental subsystem
and play a key role in many applications in information technology, such as
digital communications and digital audio and video signal processing. Most of
the existing design methods of multirate filter banks are based on idealized
operation conditions, so often they do not provide practically desirable performance.
This project will develop innovative design methods for multirate filter banks
under the worst operational conditions and multiple conflicting design objectives.
The results will fill in the gap between the theoretical design and the practical
requirements to provide enhanced performance of systems using multirate filter
banks.
