Faculty of Arts academics have recently been awarded four 2023 Macquarie University Research Fellowship (MQRF) schemes and a 2022 Macquarie University Fellowship for Indigenous Researchers (MUFIR) scheme.
GRANTS
2023 Macquarie University Research Fellowship (MQRF) scheme:
Dr Geraldine Fela from the Department of History and Archaeology for the project ‘Here to Stay! Remembering the 1998 Waterfront Dispute’. This project will interview 40 workers, union officials, and key decision makers in the Patrick corporation and Coalition government involved in the 1998 Waterfront Dispute. As the climate crisis pushes us towards a new period of turbulence and transition in Australian working lives, it is of crucial importance that we hear from those who experienced a similar period of abrupt transformation 25 years ago.
Dr Catherine Gascoigne from Macquarie Law School for the project ‘Towards a new legal framework for adjudicating causal questions in international investment law’. This proposed project aims to develop a new model for analysing causation in international investment law disputes. Specifically, it seeks to analyse the current deficiencies in international investment law jurisprudence (particularly the use of historical causal principles that are unsuited to this area of law) and show how they can lead to unjust outcomes.
Dr Christian Gelder from the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature for the project ‘Mental Health Modernism: Modern Literature and the Aesthetics of Mental Health’. Focusing on the period between 1908 and 1948, this innovative and interdisciplinary project will deliver the first literary history of mental health psychology.
Dr Alistair Sisson from the School of Social Sciences for the project ‘The politics of housing data: examining the uneven quantification of housing problems’. This project examines the drivers and consequences of the range of efforts to quantify housing problems in Australia. The project will advance critical understandings of quantitative data among policymakers, advocates/activists, researchers and the public, including how such data can challenge or reinforce established policy paradigms and power relations.
2022 Macquarie University Fellowship for Indigenous Researchers (MUFIR) scheme:
Rose Barrowcliffe from the Department of Indigenous Studies for the project ‘Making the right to know possible: metadata for discovering and accessing records relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’. This research aims to develop methods for integrating Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) protocols and Indigenous knowledges into the metadata of archival records.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Dr Peter Edwell from the Department of History and Archaeology has been shortlisted in the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards for his book,‘The Case that Stopped a Nation: The Archibald Prize Controversy of 1944’. The book recounts a thorough telling of the 1944 Archibald prize scandal involving William Dobell's winning portrait of fellow artist Joshua Smith, and the court case that ensued. The judge’s comments state “…this book about the portrait that shocked and stunned a nation and the impact it had on Dobell, makes a substantial contribution to Australian art history.”