Research Strengths

Danielle Celermajer

• ‘Hannah Arendt as a Jewish thinker’: This project explores Arendt's complex relationship with her identity as a Jew,drawing out ambiguities apparent in her writing to challenge the traditional view that Arendt was a secular thinker. It will focus on her views about human plurality and truth and by comparing them with the thought of two explicitly Jewish writers, Rosenzweig and Levinas, elucidate the distinctly Jewish tones in her work. Faculty of Arts Research and development fund: $12,0000.

Fran Collyer

• ‘Deciding to take out private health insurance in Australia: personal choice and social responsibility’, with Amanda Elliot, Professor Stephanie Short from Griffith University, and Dr Karen Willis and Dr Kristin Natalier from the University of Tasmania.

Catriona Elder

• ‘Shop Girls, Factory Girls and Secretaries: Young Non-professional women workers, 1930s-1950s’, Faculty Research Seed Funding Scheme, $2000 with Amanda Elliot. This project explores the social relations of the workplace for young women non-professional workers in the period of the 1930s-1950s. Though women were not new to paid work, this was a period of momentous social change, which affected women’s experiences of work. The social aspects of young women’s work experience are under researched. Using oral interviews, this research will analyse key areas of these women’s work lives, including personal relationships with co-workers, relationships with managers and employers, income and consumption patterns and family life (including living arrangements, child care and marriage
• Re-enacting non-Indigenous belonging in Australia: Popular History 1970-2005, University of Sydney Research and Development Grant, $15000. This project explores the contemporary production and consumption of Australian history on television. Focusing on mini-series and series based around historical themes (the First Fleet, pastoral expansion, the Gold Rushes, etc) it explores continuities and changes in the way television has represented the colonial relationship over the last 30 years.
• Connections/Disconnections: Australia-India Comparative Studies. ARC IREX , $45000 with Dr Paul Sharrad, Prof. CT Indra, Dr GK Prasad. This project emerges from a research exchange programme between scholars in Australia (USyd, UWollongong) and India (UMadras). The particlular focus is the personal, social and educational experiences of Indian students who came to Australia to undertake higher education from the 1950s -1970s.

Amanda Elliot

• ‘Deciding to take out private health insurance in Australia: personal choice and social responsibility’. A collaborative project with researchers from the University of Sydney, University of Tasmania and Griffith University on the role of private health insurance in the Australian health system and public attitudes towards it. The research explores the influence of socio-cultural contexts on decisions to purchase private health insurance.
• ‘New trends in Australian social policy: young people's perspectives on social provision’. This research examines generational differences in attitudes towards social provision. This research (undertaken in collaboration with Dr Susan Goodwin from the Faculty of Education and Social Work) was funded for 2006 by a University of Sydney R&D Grant of $18,000. Outcomes from this research have been presented at national and international conferences.
• Framing new health policy configurations as narratives for public consumption. Explores the way governments and other stakeholders attempt to define debates about health care reform and develop their vision of the health system through public debate. Outcomes from this research have been most recently published in Health Sociology Review (15(2) 2006).
• ‘Shop Girls, Factory Girls and Secretaries: Young Non-professional women workers, 1930s-1950s’, is being undertaken in collaboration with Dr Catriona Elder from the Department of Sociology and Social Policy. This research explores the social relations of the workplace for young women non-professional workers in the period of the 1930s-1950s.

Deirdre Howard-Wagner

• Dr Howard-Wagner’s area of research interest is socio-legal studies, including identities rights and the law, Indigenous people, issues and the law, and law reform (specifically law reform in relation to the governance of crime, terrorism, citizenship/migration/refugee, environmental, and negligence law).
• Study of the sustainability of Indigenous Land Use Agreements as a mechanism for protecting native title, University of Sydney Research and Development Grant 2007.
• Evaluation of user group perceptions of the Medical Assessment Scheme and Claims Advisory and Resolution Service established under the Motor Accident Compensation Act 1999 (NSW). Chief Investigators: Professor T Wright and Dr D Howard-Wagner (January 2004 - July 2006)
• Study of changes to Aboriginal legal services ? University of Newcastle Early Career Researcher Grant awarded June 2005.

• Other projects:
• Study examining the relationship between changes to criminal laws in NSW, the pre-emption of crime and spatial governance.

Michael Humphrey

• ‘Professions, Human Rights, & the State: law and medicine in the transition from repression to democracy.’ ARC Discovery (2004-6): ($104,000). This project is a comparative study of contemporary human rights politics in Argentina and South Africa. This project explores the role of rights consciousness and new victims movements in democratizing societies.

• Other projects
• ‘Insecurity, transnational governmentality and the management of Islam and Muslims in the West’. This project examines the construction of Muslims and Islam as an object of transnational public policy and the insights it provides into globalizing processes of governance and security.
• ‘Megacities in the 21st century: a comparative study of rural displacement, mass urbanization and urban development. (Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney SDF). This is a pilot project establishing the basis of international comparative work on megacities and the impact of contemporary mass urbanization on the ongoing capacity of the city as a vehicle for integration and social integration.

Karl Maton

• ‘Digital natives’ and education: A series of funded interdisciplinary and cross-institutional projects investigating the impact of immersion in information and communication technologies on young people’s practices and perceptions, and their implications for educational change. These include:
• ‘Educating the Net Generation: Implications for Learning and Teaching in Australian Universities.’ Research being conducted at the University of Melbourne, Charles Sturt University and the University of Wollongong; in collaboration with Kennedy, Krause, Judd, Gray, Bennett, Dalgarno, and Bishop. Funded by a Carrick Institute competitive Teaching and Learning grant ($180K, current). Externally funded.
• ‘The ‘Digital Natives’ and their Implications for Higher Education’, research being conducted at the University of Wollongong, in collaboration with Bennett, funded by a University of Wollongong Research Committee competitive grant ($10K, current). Parallel research is also to be conducted at the University of Sydney, funded by a SOPHI Strategic Development Fund grant
• ‘Special needs’. Collaborative research with an expert in special educational needs at the University of Wollongong into Reshaping Teachers’ Professional Dispositions Regarding Inclusion of Students With Disabilities, funded by University of Wollongong New Partnerships Grant ($8K, current)

• Other projects
  Collaborative research and writing on:
• the problem of ‘segmented learning’ in education (with a systemic functional linguist at UTS and educational technology researcher at University of Wollongong);
• creating the basis for a coherent, cumulative curriculum structure for school English. (with systemic functional linguistics at University of Sydney and University of Canberra);
• the problematic position of Music in the curriculum (with a music psychologist at Keele University, UK);
  the differential success across the curriculum of pupils with Asperger’s Syndrome (with special needs expert at University of Wollongong).

Rebecca Scott Bray

• ‘A Pilot Study of Medico-Legal Evidence in Criminal Courts: Expert Opinion and Injury Interpretation’. A project that analyses the use of medico-legal expert evidence in criminal courts, focussing on the role of injury interpretation by forensic specialists. The study is funded by a Faculty seeding grant.

• Other projects
  Research and writing on:
• ‘The Cultural Life of Forensic Archives’.
• ‘Forensic Sociology/Criminology and Provocation’, collaborative research and writing with Dr Danielle Tyson (La Trobe University).
• ‘Visual Culture and the Mortuary’.

Catherine Waldby

• ‘The global biopolitics of human embryonic stem cells’ funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council £271,810. Co-investigator Professor Brian Salter, University of East Anglia. Externally Funded
• ‘The Social Relations of Regenerative Medicine’ funded by University of Sydney International Research Fellowship $80,000.

• External funding applications for this project:
• ‘The Social Relations of Regenerative Medicine; Cord blood banking in the public and private sector’ ARC Discovery 2008
• ‘Human Oöcytes for Stem Cell Research: Donation and Regulation in Australia’. Co-applicants A/Professor Ian Kerridge, Professor Loane Skene and Westmede Fertility Services. ARC Linkage Scheme 2008.

Robert van Krieken

• 'Civilizing Divorce: Social Change, Law and the Transformation of
  Parenthood', ARC Discovery 2006-2008
  Full Project Desription
  This projects examines the linkages between the changes in the law
  concerning post-separation child-rearing, and the broader transformations
  of family life and adult-child relations in Australia, North America and
  Europe.

• Other projects
• 'Legal Adaptation & Social Science in Knowledge Societies'
  This project aims to by provide an empirically-based analysis of (1) the
  relationship between legal reasoning and the social sciences within
  contemporary 'knowledge societies', and (2) the way in which this
  relationship between law and social science differs for different fields
  of law and across different institutional and cultural contexts.

Jennifer Wilkinson

• The role of the Internet in Building Social capital among Homosexually Active men: virtual communities in HIV prevention ( ARC linkage 2006-2008 [LP0561891]). This study focuses on the role of the internet in producing social capital and social connectedness . It explores the benefits and harms to those homosexually active men who use the internet to access health information , meet sexual partners and build friendships ( with Prof Susan Kippax, UNSW, Dr Heather Wirth, UNSW , Prof Michael Bittman,UNE, Dr Patrick Rawstorne, UNSW)
• 2007 Social Science: What has Love Got to Do With It? This project engages with current debate about interdisciplinarity. The project aims to evaluate current research on love and intimacy across the Humanities and Social Sciences as a way of bridging what were formerly seen as separate knowledge cultures.
• Personal Communities: are they just another fall for public [man] This project explores the concept of personal community by comparing research on friendship and volunteering as examples of ‘individualized belonging’. Personal communities are evaluated from the standpoint of how they transform our understandings of personal and public life.

Tim Winter

• ‘The Politics of Heritage in a Conflict Zone: urban studies in Kashmir.’ Project looks at the role of material heritage in conflict resolution and aggravation, heritage and cultural sovereignty, and urban regeneration in the Kashmir Valley.
• ‘Asian Modernities and Tourism.’ Ongoing research project that seeks to ground and conceptualise the rise of the Asian tourist in relation to Asian modernities.
• ‘Twentieth Century Heritage in Asia.’ With so much of the heritage discourse in the region focusing on monuments and antiquities, this project asks about eras of colonialism, independence, modernism and post-modernism, and why such ‘modern histories’ are being valued, inscribed or ignored within Asia’s rapidly changing societies.