Research

Research in the Faculty of Arts extends across a diverse range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, embracing traditional, emerging and cross-disciplinary subjects. Staff in the Faculty enjoy international reputations in their chosen fields, reflected in the high level of publications-books, articles, chapters and conference papers-generated by Faculty academics each year.

School of Languages and Cultures

SLC is a vigorous centre with outstanding national and international reputation for research and teaching of a wide range of disciplines such as studies of ancient and modern societies, linguistics (including sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, translation), translation theory, critical theory,sociology and politics of literature and culture, postcolonial studies, gender studies, film and performance studies, comparative literary and cultural studies, migration, nationalism, politics, labor, social change, cultural history, social history, religion.

The pioneering methods and approaches of our leading scholars have resulted in numerous ARC and other research grants. Members of the School host a number of research clusters, networks and concentration areas, such as migration, nationalism, theatre and drama, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, comparative study of Asian societies, promoting an inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary research.

Areas of current research include:Indonesian society, history and culture (Michele Ford, Adrian Vickers); Buddhist textual traditions (Mark Allon); Germany and China (Yixu Lu); French culture and intellectual history (Elizabeth Rechniewski and Margaret Sankey; Jews in Australia (Suzanne Rutland; Theatre in Italian history (Nerida Newbigin).

School of Letters, Art and Media

SLAM is engaged in cutting-edge research across an exciting range of textual, verbal, and visual media. Researchers' methodologies range from qualitative and contextual approaches to art and literature reflected in the work of John Clark, Will Christie, Margaret Harris and Elizabeth Webby to ethnographic and computational linguistic investigation of restorative justice conferencing (Paul Dwyer, Jim Martin, Michelle Zappavigna) and the digital archiving of Indigenous Australian languages. The School hosts the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) which is a facility for digital conservation of endangered materials from the Pacific region.

SLAM is an innovator in the application of new media and communication technologies to research in the humanities. 'Resourceful Reading' (led by Robert Dixon) integrates traditional and eResearch strategies in Australian literary studies, while 'Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages' (Margaret Clunies Ross) and Mark Byron's modernist text projects integrate archival and digital research. Other projects currently funded by the ARC bridge scholarly and professional practice: 'Shakespeare Reloaded' (Liam Semler, Penny Gay, Kate Flaherty) in collaboration with Barker College explores the teaching and learning of Shakespeare at secondary and tertiary levels, and 'New Media, New Narratives: Beyond Broadcasting' (Anne Dunn) links with ABC News to investigate the cultural and social implications of the tension between new and traditional media with a special focus on cadet training.

The full scope of SLAM's research activity is extensive, including for example: the Australian Centre for Asian Art and Archaeology; visual arts from the Renaissance to the present day including Indigenous Australian art; film studies, cultural studies and religious studies; linguistics, grammar and rhetoric; media studies, Chinese media studies, digital cultures and journalism; literary studies from Old and Middle English to modernity and postmodernism; Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Australian studies and American literature; creative writing, screenwriting, performance studies and museum studies; the rhetorics of Empire and 18th- and 19th-century cultural poetics; true crime, friendship, emotion, gender, sexuality and surveillance.

School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry

SOPHI’s strengths are in some of the core disciplines in the humanities: Archaeology, Classics, History and Philosophy, as well as in innovative cross-disciplinary areas such as Gender and Cultural Studies. The School is also home to a number of exciting research centres and networks which combine strengths in disciplinary areas with innovative cross-disciplinary research: The Centre for Time (led by Federation Fellow and Challis Professor of Philosophy, Huw Price); the Pragmatics Foundations Project (also led by Price); the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science (led by Professor Mark Colyvan); the Centre for Classical and Near Eastern Studies in Australia (led by Professor Peter Wilson); and the Nation, Empire, Globe research cluster (led by Professor Alison Bashford and Professor Robert Aldrich).

SOPHI boasts a strong track record in attracting Australian Research Council funding, including a significant number of ARC Research Fellows. In 2008 SOPHI was awarded 18 ARC grants and fellowships, totalling almost five and a half million dollars.

The School’s core research strengths include Classical, Near Eastern and South East Asian Archaeology; Ancient Greek and Roman History: Ancient Greek and Roman Literature, and especially Greek drama; contemporary Cultural and Gender Studies; Early and Late Modern European History, American History, Australian History; Ancient Philosophy, Metaphysics, Logic, Ethics, the History of Philosophy, the Philosophy of Science and Political Philosophy.

School of Social and Political Sciences

SSPS ‘s research strengths reflect the profile of the constituent departments: Anthropology; Government, Politics and International Relations; Sociology; Political Economy; and Peace and Conflict Studies.

Government and IR has strengths in the field of Australian politics, particularly in the study of political parties and elections; in public policy and governance – at national and global level; comparative politics and democratisation. The IR group specialises in the study of security, globalisation, IPE and social movements. Its work is marked by a breadth of approach which embraces quantitative, historical and critical methods of analysis.

Research strengths in Sociology include socio-legal studies, including issues around indigenous land rights; science studies which includes genetics, the body and society; globalisation, including the study of migration, violence and displacement; sociological theory and human rights.

Anthropology is renowned for its work on contemporary Australia including Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander anthropology, South and Southeast Asian Anthropology, the anthropology of Melanesia and comparative cultural anthropologies. There is also an emerging strength in the anthropology of Latin American and the Caribbean. Areas of topical specialisation include phenomenology and psychoanalysis, the anthropology of development and globalisation, rural and regional areas, history and metatheory of anthropological thought, medical anthropology, urban studies, and environmental change.

The Department of Political Economy has research strengths in Development, especially in the Pacific region and Latin America; International Financial Markets; the Political Economy of Neo-Liberalism; the Political Economy of post 1992 Australia: Economic Restructuring: Work and Labour as a Global Movement. The department is also noted for its work on theories of political economy, and the nature of the struggles between competing paradigms, including Marxian and Neo-Marxian thought, post-classical economics and, recently, ecological thought.

The Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies has research interests in the nature and form of peace journalism; reconciliation and peace building in post-conflict societies (particularly in South-East Asia): indigenous rights, cultural difference and social difference: the history of warfare and peacemaking; peace tourism and human rights.