History and Philosophy of Science

Past Australian Research Council-funded projects

• Online Memorials (2013-2016)

  Professor Michael Arnold, Dr Martin Gibbs, Dr Tamara Kohn, Dr Bjorn Nansen, Dr Elizabeth Hallam
  
  This project investigates the interrelated commemorative practices, technology platforms, and social formations associated with digital commemoration. The urgency of this project arises as diverse forms of digital commemoration are increasingly used to express grief, solidarity and community, but are also a source of public and often personal disquiet. Digital commemoration is an emerging and often controversial practice with important implications for social institutions, cultural conventions and personal values. This study makes a timely evidence-based contribution to an understanding of changing commemorative practices, their digital mediation, and the interactions between them.

• An investigation of the early adoption and appropriation of high-speed broadband in the domestic environment (2013-2015)

  Professor Michael Arnold, Dr Martin Gibbs, Dr Rowan Wilken
  
  The success of the National Broadband Network (NBN) depends upon its adoption by Australian households. This project will examine the NBN in the domestic environment across two first-release sites, and will make a significant evidenced-based contribution to an assessment of this important initiative over its crucial first years.

• Challenges to moral responsibility (2011-2013)

  Assoc. Professor Neil Levy, Dr Daniel B. Cohen
  
  Agents deserve various kinds of benefits and burdens (such as punishment) only if they are morally responsible for their actions. This project aims to assess several sorts of alleged threats to our moral responsibility, and thereby to better the social allocation of goods to individuals.