SLAM Research Activities
The various streams of the School of Letters, Art and Media's research strength are reflected by the number and diversity of our externally funded research projects, as below.
SLAM Resarch Day 2009
The annual SLAM Research Day took place on Friday, October 30th. The theme for the day was ‘The Collaborative Research Experience,’ and researchers from across the School’s seven Departments, as well as Margaret Harris, Director of Research in the Faculty of Arts, and Lina Markauskaite from the Faculty of Education and Social Work presented papers on the topic.
The day began with our first invited guest, Margaret Harris, providing a general sweep of the opportunities available throughout the Arts for undertaking collaboration, touching on issues of postgraduate supervision, ARC funding, and the intellectual and professional advantages (and some of the disadvantages) associated with these kinds of projects. Margaret has vast experience with all aspects of research, and her contribution was invaluable. She was followed by Liam Semler (English) who extrapolated transferable principles of collaboration that have emerged from his project ‘Shakespeare Reloaded,’ a collaboration with the independent school, Barker College. Tim Fitzpatrick (in a paper co-written with Laura Ginters, Performance Studies) followed this up by illustrating how many of these principles were at the heart of Performance Studies as a discipline – it is, in their summation, an approach that ‘infuses’ a lot of the research undertaken throughout their department. In a change of pace, a large group associated with the collaboration between Digital Cultures and the Social Robotics Group in the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (including Chris Chesher, Kathy Cleland, John Tonkin from Digital Cultures, and their colleagues Mari Velonaki and David Rye) provided an audio visual presentation of some projects at the intersection of these incredibly diverse disciplines, as well as a discussion of issues involved with bridging large disciplinary gaps.
After a short break for refreshments, the papers continued to roll with the second of our invited guests, Lina Markauskaite presenting preliminary results of her data collection project documenting how often, with who, and in what manner researchers across four NSW universities conduct collaborations. The results were often at odds with audience expectations and elicited much discussion afterwards. Jane Simpson (Linguistics) then provided a description of the many levels of collaboration involved in ‘The Aboriginal Child Language Acquisition Project,’ ranging from community consultation to utilising inter-disciplinary experts sourced from across the country. On a more intimate note, Jay Johnston (Studies in Religion) followed with advice on how to maintain and manage the day-to-day pressures of a smaller scale collaboration, including workloads, time management, publication allocation and suggestions of how to cash in on different disciplinary backgrounds. We were next taken on a brief tour of the several collaborations of Stephanie Donald (Media and Communications), who guided us through issues of cultural sensitivity and cultural expectations from her work with Chinese visual artists, the United Muslim Women’s Association and the Commission for Children and Young people – in each instance she outlined the different conceptions of ‘time’ that had to be negotiated. Finally, Catriona Moore and Anita Callaway (Art History and Film Studies) provided an insight into the strength of the inter-personal relationships of the researchers on the ‘Dictionary of Australian Artists Online,’ without which the project would be constantly caught in bureaucratic red-tape.
All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable day, and everybody who attended, though fatigued by possible collaboration-overload, left with much to think about and a vastly expanded concept of collaborative academic research. The possibilities are exciting, the opportunities are vast, and the rewards, as all presenters noted, are incalculable. There is a reason that collaboration is on the rise throughout the Arts and Humanities, and it is simply that - it is enjoyable to work with others. Thanks to all who attended and participated.
Photos Courtesy Eugenia Demuro
Australian Research Council grants
- Shakespeare Reloaded (2008-2010), a million-dollar* collaboration between the University of Sydney and leading independent school Barker College which will transform the way Shakespeare and English literature are taught at high schools and universities.
Chief Investigators at the University of Sydney are Dr Liam Semler, Professor Penny Gay and Dr Kate Flaherty (who will take up a post-doctoral fellowship as her contribution to the project).
Shakespeare Reloaded, a three year project funded by the ARC, aims to bridge the gulf between the often very different ways Shakespeare (and English literature more broadly) is taught at secondary and tertiary levels.
The centrepiece of the project will be a unique, open-access website that will host web forums and discussion for all Australian students of Shakespeare, providing students with authoritative links to the best and latest cutting edge Shakespeare research. "The aim of the website is to promote students' research skills, critical thinking and writing abilities," says Dr Semler.
"Barker College is well known as a leading school in the teaching of English and Drama, and the College has staged award-winning Shakespearean productions," said Dr Rod Kefford, Headmaster of Barker College.
Researchers will also link up with Barker's drama department, so teaching strategies can be applied to Shakespeare in performance as well as Shakespeare as text. "We see this as a two-way partnership: our English department of thirty teachers is comparable in size and dedication to the University's own English department.
*Includes cash and in-kind support from the Australian Research Council, The University of Sydney and Barker College.
- New Media, New Narratives: Beyond Broadcasting (2008-2010), an ARC funded Linkage Project with Dr Anne Dunn (Media & Communications Program) in collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. This is a cutting-edge two year project which will investigate the cultural and social implications of the tension between new and traditional media. This collaborative project with ABC News will explore new models for training journalism cadets and will demonstrate how media organisations can innovate in what they produce and how they produce it.
The outcome of this project will be a demonstration of the important role of public broadcasting in new media innovation and in building new relationships with audiences.
- Resourceful Reading (2007-2009), an ARC-funded Discovery Project which aims to re-examine and re-invigorate Australian literary criticism and history by exploring the field using new, empirically-rich methodologies. It is a leading example of what has been called the ‘new empiricism’ in Australian literary studies.
The Chief Investigators on this project are Professor Robert Dixon (USyd), and Professor Gillian Whitlock and Dr Leigh Dale (UQ). Dr Katherine Bode (USyd) is a postdoctoral research fellow on this grant.
Resourceful readings integrate traditional, qualitative approaches to literary studies with empirical methods like quantitative analysis and data mining, as well as eResearch strategies and digital archives more generally. This approach to Australian literary studies aims to revise the legacy of theoretically-driven literary history and criticism, and to generate new ways of writing literary history and reading texts.
Such innovation is necessary to keep pace with digitized information now available to Australian literary studies, and with changes to the way that humanities research is undertaken internationally.
In association with the Resourceful Reading project, Austlit@USyd will host a major symposium on eResearch and Australian Literary Culture, to be held at the University of Sydney from 4-5 December, 2008. This symposium will bring together researchers from a range of disciplines, and across various institutions, to discuss the possibilities of eResearch methodologies for Australian literary studies, and in the process, create fruitful partnerships between academics, writers, librarians and publishing professionals.
- Professor John Clark has been awarded a prestigious and highly coveted Australian Professorial Fellowship. This 5 year project (2008-2012), worth over $500,000 of ARC funds, is entitled 'The Asian Modern,' and will reveal what is modern in Asian art by making comparisons across national boundaries and with representative examples of Australian modern art. Through this process, we will gain a deeper understanding of where Australia fits in the region. The project will produce a comparative theoretical framework that will be capable of application beyond Asia and Australia.
- Patrick White in the 21st Century, a Discovery Project (Chief Investigators Professor Margaret Harris and Professor Elizabeth Webby) (2008-2010) which will offer a new appraisal of the career of Patrick White through the examination of archival material including manuscripts acquired by the National Library of Australia in late 2006. This project will offer a fresh perspective on White's view of his native land, illuminating his writing in relation to national and international literary traditions.
- A Critical Investigation into the Life and Writings of Francis Jeffrey (1773 1850) (2008-2010). The only places where Francis Jeffrey's enormously influential 'Edinburgh Review' was read more avidly than in Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century were in the ex colony of America and in British colonies like Australia. Chief Investigator Assoc. Prof. Will Christie of the University of Sydney's English Department has been awarded over $200,000 for his three year project which will offer a critical and interdisciplinary investigation into the literary, legal and political career of the writings of the Scottish critic, Francis Jeffrey.
- Enacting Reconciliation: Negotiating Meaning in Youth Justice Conferencing (2008-2010). Professor Jim Martin, Dr Paul Dwyer and Dr Michelle Zappavigna have been awarded over $300,000 for a Discovery Project which brings together a disciplinarily diverse team of investigators to offer a groundbreaking and detailed analysis of youth justice conferencing. This project will add to Australia's reputation as a world-leader in the field of restorative justice.
- Women's Poetry and Classicism in Early Modern England 1500-1700, a Discovery Project in which the English Department's Dr Liam Semler investigates how the idea of the woman writer developed in England in the age of print;
- Textual Ontogeny and the Understanding of Modernist Texts: A Case Study of Samuel Beckett's Novel, Watt, an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship project awarded to Dr Mark Byron which creates a new method of literary editing to enhance the understanding of modernist literature and use of technology in the humanities.
SLAM Digital Research
Ongoing electronically-based SLAM research projects include:
- The Skaldic Editing Project, an international ARC-funded project;
- PARADISEC’s role with the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories, a DEST-funded national research infrastructure initiative (http://www.apsr.edu.au).
