About our Research

Global Policy Futures Our research investigates the new and ongoing uncertainties of our world and the relationship between global, international, national and/or local governing networks in navigating these challenges. We ask whether new and recurring crises are a cause or manifestation of weak governance and how effective policy action might reflect strong governance.

We focus on current and ongoing developments related to the causes and consequences of democratic institutions, authoritarian environments, geo-political competition, state-building, war, transnational social movements, techno-industry strategy, international development, climate change, and humanitarian displacement.

The ways in which we govern, and the extent to which and why industrial and regulatory policies and instruments matter, are core to our focus. We probe how and with what success individuals, communities, nations, states, international organisations and supranational bodies respond to common global challenges.

Our key areas of research strength include:

  • Regulation of health and bio-security
  • Border politics
  • Globalisation and the de-coupling of the world economy
  • The history of political ideas and philosophies
  • Transnational social movements
  • Humanitarian upheavals
  • Environmental politics and environmental and climate change agreements
  • Public and social policy
  • Politics and religion
  • Gender and identity politics
  • Australian foreign policy, education and religious policies
  • The international politics of the Middle East
  • American politics and policy
  • East and Southeast Asian development and regionalism

Sung-Young Kim is currently working on a book-length project on 'The Sources of Competitive Advantage in Exporting Green Energy Systems', which examines why, what and how governments and corporations are promoting smart grids. As a revolutionary step forward from the 'dumb power grids' still in use today, smart grids are the technological infrastructure upon which a clean energy transition will be possible. He is also one of four Chief Investigators on an ambitious Australia Research Council Discovery Project (ARC DP) examining 'East Asia's clean energy shift: enablers, obstacles, outcomes and lessons' (2019-2021), which examines the state's role in China and Korea's clean energy transitions.

Tobia Fattore researches global policy initiatives promoting children’s rights and well-being. This includes assessing how constructs of well-being more generally are used as an alternative standard for policy impact in different policy settings. He is a coordinating lead researcher on the multi-national study Children's Understandings of Well-being - Global and Local Contexts, which involves a qualitative investigation into how children experience well-being in 29 different countries and Editor-in-Chief of Child Indicators Research.

Banu Senay is a social anthropologist. Her current research focuses on the governance of Islam in the contemporary Turkish context. This research investigates how massively funded bureaucracies allocate state resources for pious practices in particular through the educational field. Another key strand of her anthropological work focuses on diaspora politics, examining the intimate relationship between the political and religious fields of state-sponsored transnationalism.

Jonathan Symons researches global policy responses to environmental challenges. Jon’s current work focuses on how international inequalities structure global climate governance, and on emerging political contestation over carbon dioxide removal, engineering biology and solar geoengineering.

Andrew McGregor is working on an Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research funded project analysing the social dimensions of agricultural extension and transition in Cambodia with Cambodian and Australian partners (including Nick Harrigan). He is also involved in a series of projects exploring food systems transitions involving veganism, alternative proteins and area wide management.

Fiona Miller is undertaking collaborative research on the climate-related displacement in Vietnam, looking at the interaction between planned resettlement projects and migration. Fiona, together with a number of MQ Social Sciences staff, is a member of the Shadow Places Network – a network of scholars, artists and activists who collaborate to document, co-produce and reimagine connections between places and peoples in an era of climate change.

Umut Ozguc is a critical International Relations (IR) scholar. Her work research cuts across border studies, mobilities, settler colonialism and critical methods in security studies and IR. Her current work focuses on Australia’s digital borders. She is the co-founder of Australian Critical Border Studies Network.

Ben Spies-Butcher researches the political economy of social policy, focusing on changing models of public finance. He is co-Director of the Australian Basic Income Lab, and has completed funded policy analysis of stimulus spending for the Centre for Policy Development and health finance for the McKell Institute. Ben has worked with several policy organisations and currently advises Just Reinvest NSW on justice reinvestment financing mechanisms.

Sara Fuller is an urban and environmental geographer. Her research focuses on concepts and practices of justice in the context of global environmental change, with an empirical focus on grassroots, community and activist responses to climate change. Her current work explores the politics and governance of urban climate justice across the Asia-Pacific region.

Lloyd Cox currently focuses on the pitfalls of the AUKUS pact, which will see Australia acquire up to eight nuclear-powered submarines. This is part of a broader research program that critically scrutinizes the US-Australia Alliance, and the strategic culture and political emotions on which it is premised.

Govand Azeez is a political economist and a philosopher. His current research interests include an examination of how the local and global symbiotic relationship between capitalism and the state is manufacturing novel technologies and techniques of exploitation, expropriation and oppression, as well as different geo-political structures, socio-economic formations and subjectivities.

Francesco Stolfi studies the political conflicts surrounding the regulation of professions and occupations. His current research is on the politics of paying physicians in Australia and Canada.

Kate Gleeson researches questions of gender, sexuality and religion at the intersection of politics, history and law. Kate is currently an investigator on a mixed methods study of campus sexual violence prevention policies, an investigator on a study of coercive control policies and public opinion, and an investigator on an interdisciplinary mixed methods study of trust in religion and public policy.

Ian Tregenza works on religion and politics, political theory and Australian intellectual history. He is currently researching the history of Quadrant magazine and modern Australian conservatism as part of a larger study of Australian political thought.

Cox, L., Cooper, D., & O’Connor, B. (2023) ‘The AUKUS umbrella: Australia-US relations and strategic culture in the shadow of China’s rise’ International Journal 78, 3, https://doi.org/10.1177/00207020231195631

Fattore, T., Adams, A., Akkan, B., Barn, R.,  Erdoğan, E., Fegter, S., Mason, J., März, S., Müderrisoğlu, S., Savahl,  S., Tonon, G., Uyan-Semerci, P. (2023) ‘Child Well-being and Social Justice: Reflections and findings from a Multinational Qualitative Study with Children’ in Craig, G. (ed.) Social Justice in a Turbulent Era, Edward Elgar https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/social-justice-in-a-turbulent-era-9781803926148.html

Friederich, Simon, and Jonathan Symons. (2023) "Operationalising sustainability? Why sustainability fails as an investment criterion for safeguarding the future." Global Policy 14, 1: 61-71. https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13160

Gleeson, K. & Russell, Y. (eds) (2023), New directions in sexual violence scholarship: law, power and change. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003379331-1/new-directions-sexual-violence-scholarship-kate-gleeson-yvette-russell

Tregenza, I, ‘The "Servile State" Down Under: Hilaire Belloc and Australian political thought, 1912-53’ (2021), Journal of the History of Ideas, 82, 2, p. 305-327 https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2021.0015

McGregor, A., Houston, D., Dilworth, T., Bojovic, M. 2023 Plant-based food politics: veganism, quiet activism and small businesses in Sydney’s foodscapes. Social and Cultural Geography https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2023.2208087

Ozguc, U and Burridge, A. (2023) ‘More than human borders: A new research agenda for posthuman conversations in border studies’ Geopolitics, 28:2 https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2023.2169879

Page, M. & Fuller, S., (2021) Governing energy transitions in Australia: low carbon innovation and the role for intermediary actors, Energy Research and Social Science. 73, p. 1-8 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101896

Spies-Butcher, B. (2023). Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation. Anthem Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.6947042

Stolfi, Francesco and Oliver Fritsch (2023) More flexible, less productive? The impact of employment protection legislation reforms in Italy. South European Society and Politics https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2023.2238970

Thurbon, E., Kim, S-Y., Tan, H., & Mathews, J. (2023). Developmental environmentalism: state ambition and creative destruction in East Asia's green energy transition. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192897794.001.0001

Simran Keshwani is a PhD Candidate in the Discipline of Politics and International Relations. Her research project examines the drivers, limits, and obstacles to the role of the Indian state in the country’s clean energy transition. She pays special attention to the Solar-Hydrogen Economy in advancing India’s greening goals.

Thom Dixon is a PhD Candidate in the Discipline of Politics and International Relations. His thesis topic is “Bioinformation, Cyberbiosecurity and Technological Surprise: an investigation of synthetic biology and great power technological rivalry.” In 2018, he completed a Non-resident WSD-Handa Fellowship with the Pacific Forum on synthetic biology and Australian foreign policy. Thom is an Emerging Leader alumni of the 2017 EU-Australia Leadership Forum and an alumni of the 2021 US-Australia Next-Generation Leadership Initiative. He is the Manager, National Security and Defence at Macquarie University and Vice President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs NSW. He researches the convergence of the life sciences with the information sciences and the impact this is having on international relations.

April Cook is a PhD Candidate in the Discipline of Politics and International Relations. April’s research focuses on the role of evangelical protestantism in contemporary American politics. In particular, she is interested in the nexus between Chistian nationalism, masculinity, and the radicalization of the modern Republican Party.

Dylan Sullivan is a PhD Candidate and Adjunct Fellow in the Discipline of Sociology and a Co-tutelle student at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. His research examines the relationship between poverty, living standards and capitalist development, focusing on alternative models for achieving decent living within ecological boundaries. His research has been published in New Political Economy and World Development.

Milena Bojovic is a PhD candidate in the Discipline of Geography and Planning. Her research explores environmental and social sustainability issues within food systems, particularly the intersections of climate change, animal agriculture and the development and diffusion of alternative proteins. Her PhD examines just transitions for the dairy sector in Aotearoa New Zealand, and considers the justice implications for humans, non-humans and environments.