SOPHI staff and the University of Sydney's research clusters
A number of research clusters have been established within the Faculty of Arts and beyond to facilitate inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary research. A research cluster is an association of academics who share common research interests. The environment established within the research cluster is designed to facilitate collaboration and collegiality between academics.
Just a few of the research clusters SOPHI academics participate in are listed below.
Mellon Sawyer Seminar
The Antipodean Laboratory: Humanity, Sovereignty and Environment in Southern Oceans and Lands, 1700-2009
The Seminar
The University of Sydney is the proud host of the first Mellon Sawyer Seminar to be held in Australia. The seminar will run roughly from March 2009 to August 2010, consisting of eight special seminar sessions and one international conference.
The Sydney Sawyer Seminar explores the history of how the Antipodes - and especially the Indo-Pacific lands and oceans - has constituted a laboratory for the Atlantic world over a broad intellectual, geographical and temporal scale. Our seminar covers three centuries from 1700 to 2009, and focuses on Atlantic-derived conceptions and experiences within the Antipodes that bear especially on the themes of humanity and cultures, of sovereignty and imperialism, and of environment and ecology. Our prime method is comparative: the intellectual and social colonization of the Antipodes was never a simple one-way process of control and exploitation. Ideas also flowed in reverse, moving from periphery to metropole, from Indo-Pacific fields to Atlantic worlds, and with consequences that could be conservative, subversive or much else. In short, we examine the reciprocal exchange of selected discourses and practices between these two great geo-political spheres from the early modern period to the present. At the same time we investigate whether, and to what extent, local concerns and ideas have been able to achieve autonomy from the long reach of Atlantic influence.
Generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the University of Sydney
Melon Sawyer Seminar website
Nation Empire Globe Research Cluster
The University of Sydney is a leading centre for the study of three of the most important contemporary subjects of inter-disciplinary inquiry in the humanities and social sciences: colonialism, nationalism and globalisation.
RIHSS established the Nation Empire Globe Research Cluster in mid-2005 in order to bring together academic staff currently divided by disciplinary and administrative boundaries, to build on complementary research methodologies and to develop research opportunities.
Membership is drawn from departments in the Faculty of Arts, of English, History, Sociology and Social Policy, Art History and Theory, Government and International Relations, French Studies, Chinese Studies, and Anthropology. It also includes the Faculty of Law, the Department of Government and International Relations in the Faculty of Economics and Business, the Faculty of Education and Social Work and its School of Politics and Practice, and the Unit for History and Philosophy of Science in the Faculty of Science.
Nation Empire Globe website
Religion and Post Kantian Philosophy Research Cluster
The Religion & Post-Kantian Philosophy Research Cluster is an inter-disciplinary group, based in the Department of Philosophy, whose overall goal is to consolidate and expand upon the active research program that has built up in the last few years around the Philosophy of Religion Research Seminar, the KAPKI (Kantian & Post-Kantian Idealism) Seminars, and an ARC funded project on "The God of Hegel's Post-Kantian Idealism".
In 2008 and 2009, the Philosophy of Religion Research Seminar addressed and put into perspective many questions and challenges surrounding the discipline of the philosophy of religion by inviting a number of philosophers to present papers. In 2008, the Philosophy of Religion Research Seminar has received an increasing attention from scholars working on post-Kantian tradition (broadly conceived), both inside and outside the Department of Philosophy.
At the same time, there has been an increase of postgraduate research interest in the post-Kantian approach to the philosophy of religion (including research in the areas of German Idealism, Existentialism, Hermeneutics,) A significant expression of this interest is the KAPKI (Kantian and Post-Kantian Idealism) Research Group. Further evidence of the fruitfulness of research in this area is represented by the ARC grant, related to the project “The God of Hegel’s Post-Kantian Idealism”, that has been secured by Paul Redding and Paolo Diego Bubbio in 2008.
As a result of the merging of these two successful experiences, the Religion & Post-Kantian Philosophy Research Cluster has been established in 2009. The overall goal of the “Religion & Post-Kantian Philosophy Research Cluster” is to bring together academic staff currently divided by disciplinary and administrative boundaries, to build on complementary research methodologies and to develop research opportunities.
Religion and Post-Kantian Philosophy website
Archaeology of Sydney Research Group
The Archaeology of Sydney Research Group (ASRG) is a joint initiative between academic staff from the Department of Archaeology, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney and professional archaeologists and researchers who work in Sydney. We aim to provide a focus and forum for supporting, developing and promoting research, professional, educational and other public benefit outcomes from archaeology conducted in the Greater Sydney region.
Research themes:
- Life in Sydney: Food and diet, fish and marine resources, market gardening; Ethnicity and gender; Mercantilism.
- Convicts: Convict institutions; development of a free society.
- Industry and Infrastructure: Maritime, potteries, defence, transport, standing buildings
- Landscapes: Urbanisation, Aboriginal land use, Parramatta, cemeteries
Aboriginal Sydney: Stone tool evolution, resource use, land use patterns, rock art, contact - Public Archaeology and Heritage: Synthesis and publication, grey literature, sustainable digital archives, public education
- History of Sydney Archaeology
Archaeology of Sydney Research Group website
Network for Childhood and Youth Research
The Network for Childhood and Youth Research is a broad, interfaculty research cluster, and is part of the Worldwide Universities Network for Children, Youth and Families.
Coordinated though the Faculty of Education and Social Work by Professor Derrick Armstrong (Dean) and Drs Dorothy Bottrell, Kathy Edwards and Linda Graham (Senior Research Associates in Child and Youth Studies) the University of Sydney Network for Childhood and Youth Research comprises researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in issues relating to young people.
SOPHI staff involved in the cluster include:
- Dr Lesley Beaumont, Department of Archaeology
- Dr Catherine Driscoll, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies