Projects
View a selection of current and completed projects that have been undertaken by the Australian Centre.
Examining the social, historical and political effects of school discipline
Grant type
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award
Researcher
Dr Sophie Rudolph (University of Melbourne)
Description
Examining the social, historical and political effects of school discipline. This project aims to examine the history and socio-political context of the school element of the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ in Victoria through an examination of school discipline. This project expects to build vital knowledge of the relationship between school discipline and racialised school exclusion through historical accounts, policy analysis, interviews and focus group research. Expected outcomes include new understanding of the social, historical and political effects of school discipline and new possibilities for strengthening school-community relations. This should provide significant benefits, such as improved opportunities for school participation, and enhanced local and international networks to address education equity.
Family Secrets, National Silences: Intergenerational Memory in Australia
Grant type
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award
Researcher
Dr Ashley Barnwell (University of Melbourne)
Description
This project aims to investigate the inherited family secrets, stories, and memories that inform understandings of Australian colonial history. The histories told in schools and museums shape national identity and can affect Indigenous-settler relations. This project expects to generate new knowledge about the histories told or concealed within families, and how they influence people's political views. It will benefit individuals and communities working toward national healing by creating knowledge about how views are created, fixed, and altered over time.
How should we tell the truth about Australia?
Researchers
- Professor Sarah Maddison (University of Melbourne)
- Dr Julia Hurst (University of Melbourne)
- Associate Professor Sheryl Lightfoot (University of British Columbia)
- Professor David MacDonald (University of Guelph)
Description
Truth-telling is emerging as a central political dynamic in Australia. As treaty processes take shape in several Australian jurisdictions it is clear that truth commissions are going to be at the heart of future treaty negotiations. Victoria has already created the Yoo-rrook Justice Commission, with the mission to ‘investigate both historical and ongoing injustices committed against Aboriginal Victorians since colonisation’, while Queensland and the Northern Territory have also signalled that truth-telling will play a significant role in their emerging treaty processes and Tasmania has committed to finding a pathway towards treaty and reconciliation. These new processes build on the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, which made an explicit recommendation for a Makarrata Commissionthat would ‘supervise agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history’ (Referendum Council 2017). As Appleby and Davis (2018) contend, the demand for truth in Australia is explicitly linked to the hope for political transformation. Truth, it is hoped, will offer a way to understand what is at stake in future relations between First Nations and the Australian settler state. Linking truth-telling to treaty only emphasises such aspirations. As the Yoo-rrook Justice Commissioners have collectively argued, ‘There can be no Treaty without truth’ (Walter et al 2021).
Yet even as this new commitment to truth-telling emerges it is not clear that there is shared understanding of what truth might offer, and Australia has attempted to follow a treaty pathway before. International experience suggests that truth-telling rarely lives up to its promise. If Australia seeks to avoid such disappointment then there are questions to be asked. This paper explores some of the challenges and opportunities that truth-telling in Australia suggests, to ask the fundamental question: how should we tell the truth about Australia?
Indigenous Storytelling and the Living Archive of Aboriginal Knowledge
Grant type
Discovery Indigenous
Researchers
- Dr Jeanine Leane CI (University of Melbourne)
- Associate Professor Kate Senior CI (University of Newcastle)
- Professor Richard Chenhall CI (University of Melbourne)
- Dr Rimi Khan PI (RMIT)
- Associate Professor Gavan McCarthy CI (University of Melbourne)
- Dr Sabra Thorner PI (Mount Holyoke)
Description
Indigenous Storytelling and the Living Archive of Aboriginal Knowledge. No archiving system adequately responds to the interconnected and relational knowledge systems of Indigenous peoples'. This project aims to explore the potential of Indigenous Storytelling, which supports the interconnection of everything, as a way of intervening in the linear structure of institutional archives. A non-linear, interactive archiving system will be developed in collaboration with Aboriginal people. Such a system aims to better reflect Aboriginal perspectives about culture and histories in relation to collections held in galleries, libraries, archives and museums. An evaluation of museums globally will advance understandings of the opportunities for greater Indigenous co-management of their dispersed collections.
Inquiring into Empire: Remaking the British world after 1815
Researcher
Description
Zoë Laidlaw is a Chief Investigator on ARC Discovery Project DP180100537 Inquiring into Empire: remaking the British world after 1815 (2018-2022). Inquiring into Empire examines the pivotal role of commissions of inquiry in reforming law throughout the British Empire from 1815-1840. Using traditional methods and digital tools, the project investigates the design, instantiation and impact of inquiry on colonial law, the imperial constitution and the mechanisms of imperial governance across the empire. Its outcomes include enhancement of our understanding of law reform, the historical functions of commissions of inquiry, and the legacy of British imperial rule throughout the world. Chief investigators are Lisa Ford (UNSW); Kirsten McKenzie (Sydney); David Roberts (UNE); Zoë Laidlaw (Melbourne); and Stephen Doherty (UNSW). Partner Investigators are Alan Lester (Sussex); Paul Halliday (Virginia); and Philip Stern (Duke).
Zoë Laidlaw is also Principal Investigator for three UK AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Training Grants in collaboration with Dr Gaye Sculthorpe, Curator of Oceania, The British Museum. These grants have funded three PhD studentships exploring the little-known and under-utilised Australian collections of The British Museum and other UK-based collections of Indigenous Australian objects and images. ‘The Royal Navy and Colonial Collecting, 1820-1870’ (2014-17) was completed by Daniel Simpson (Royal Holloway University of London); ‘Picturing the Antipodes: race, image and empire in 19th-century Britain’ (2016-2020) is being completed by Mary McMahon (RHUL); and Nicola Froggatt (RHUL) is working on ‘British Ethnographic Collecting in Western Australia’ (2017-2021).
Re-imagining Humanities through Indigenous Creative Arts
Grant type
Discovery Indigenous
Researchers
- Dr Ali Baker (CI)
- Dr Simone Tur (CI)
- A/Prof Katerina Teaiwa (CI)
- Mrs Faye Blanch (CI)
- Dr Natalie Harkin (CI)
- Dr Cindy Bennett (CI)
- Dr Romaine Moreton (PI)
Description
Re-imagining Humanities through Indigenous Creative Arts. This project will develop an Indigenous Creative Arts Framework to reimagine and transform the Humanities across Australian Universities. It will engage Indigenous creative arts academics, scholars, curators, practitioners and communities to conceptualise new innovations in teaching, research, community engagement and ethics. This project will centre critical Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing; contribute new Indigenous research methodologies and restorative practices; and reframe knowledge through creative arts praxis. Such innovative and dynamic advances in research will recognise and grow Indigenous capacity building across the Humanities, as vital to cultural wellbeing for all Australians.
Revitalising Indigenous-state relations
Grant type
ARC Discovery Project
Researchers
- Professor Sarah Maddison (University of Melbourne)
- Dr Nikki Moodie (University of Melbourne)
- Associate Professor Morgan Brigg (University of Queensland)
- Dr Elizabeth Strakosch (University of Queensland)
Description
This project is investigating the complexity of Indigenous affairs governance and the ongoing tensions in the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the Australian state. The project expects to generate new data on contemporary Indigenous governance arrangements and analyse them using an original conceptual framework to inform knowledge-exchange workshops designed to advance proposed new approaches. Expected outcomes of this project include concrete proposals for re-setting Indigenous-settler relations and Indigenous affairs policy. This should provide significant benefits in the field of Indigenous governance including plans for more genuine transformation in Australian Indigenous-settler relations.
Understanding and Recognising Indigenous Law and Legal Systems
Grant type
ARC Future Fellowship
Researcher
Description
This project aims to analyse the written constitutions and laws of Indigenous nations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The Project expects to generate the first comparative study of written Indigenous law. It will generate new knowledge of Indigenous legal concepts that will enable settler and Indigenous officials, scholars and members of the public to better understand and recognise Indigenous law.
Western Australian Legacies of British Slavery
Grant type
ARC Discovery Project
Researchers
- Professor Zoë Laidlaw (University of Melbourne)
- Professor Jane Lydon (University of Wester Australia)
- Dr Jeremy Martins (University of Western Australia)
- Professor Paul Arthur (Edith Cowan University)
- Professor Catherine Hall (University College London)
- Mr Keith McClelland (University College London)
- Professor Alan Lester (University of Sussex)
Description
This project aims to bring Australia into the global history of slavery by exploring the legacies of British slavery in Western Australia. Through developing innovative methods for biographical research and digital mapping, it will trace the movement of capital, people and culture from slave-owning Britain to WA, and produce a new history of the continuing impact of slavery wealth in shaping colonial immigration, investment, and law.
Ending Aqua Nullius: Sustainable and Legitimate Water Law in Settler States
Grant type
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award
Researcher
Dr Erin O'Donnell (University of Melbourne)
Description
This project aims to investigate how treaty and agreement making can lead to water law reform in settler colonial states. This project will use interdisciplinary approaches in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada and the US to develop new knowledge of how Indigenous sovereignty shapes water law. Expected outcomes of this project include enhanced collaborations between researchers and Indigenous Peoples, evidence-based law and policy guidelines for ethical, pluralist water laws, and context-specific pathways for water law reform developed in partnership with Indigenous Peoples as part of Treaty-making. This should provide significant benefits, such as improving both the legitimacy and ecological sustainability of water law in Australia.
