From grant and fellowship successes to honourable mentions, see where Faculty of Arts academics have been recognised this month.
GRANTS
A multidisciplinary team of Macquarie University researchers specialising in early childhood education (ECE), industrial relations, workforce and economic analysis have received $270,690 in funding from the ACT Government for the project ‘Early Childhood Education Pay & Conditions Research’. Professor Sheila Degotardi, Dr Tamara Cumming and Dr Natalie Brand from the School of Education, alongside Professor Rebecca Mitchell, Associate Professor Jun Gu, Professor Louise Thornthwaite and Associate Professor Kompal Sinha from Macquarie Business School aim to identify pay and employment conditions that will positively impact the attraction and retention of ECE educators. The research team will generate findings and recommendations that will inform ECE policy and industrial relations reform as well as workforce initiatives planned by large and small ECE employers.
Professor Bronwen Neil, from the Department of History and Archaeology, has been awarded a fellowship from Heidelberg University (Universität Heidelberg) in 2024 for the project ‘Back to the Garden? Ancient imaginaries and apocalyptic concepts of environmental collapse in Europe and the Pacific’. Professor Neil’s project seeks to draw positive examples of social organisation within apocalyptic frameworks from the Later Roman Empire of the first millennium and the Pacific cultures of the second millennium. In the Mediterranean society of the fourth to eighth centuries, a new ideal of sharing resources equally and regardless of social status collided with the ancient Roman hierarchical, wealth-based structures. This clash of cultures was a productive conflict, in that it led to new ways of thinking about human responsibility for the stewardship of natural and human resources. In the Pacific islands, where movements of people from west to east by sea-canoe have been placed as early as 800-1200 CE, an ethos of sharing scarce resources among islanders was the foundation of their sea-based way of life. These two very different cultures developed similar cosmologies to deal with frequent natural disasters and a perilous existence that depended on unpredictable climate patterns. Heidelberg University hosts a collection of rare medieval manuscripts and the Wellington Te Papa Museum holds valuable Pacific sources, including the Hutchins collection of photographs documenting life in the Cook Islands at the end of the 19th century.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Professor Ronika Power, from the Department of History and Archaeology, has been named as one of the 50 women at the cutting edge of science in Australia by the Royal Institute of Australia’s Cosmos Magazine. The list was compiled in honour of International Women's Day 2023, to showcase "exceptional and interesting" women scientists and researchers across Australia. The list features incredible and inspiring women scientists from across disciplines including Anthropology, Archaeology, Physics, Technology, Health and Medical Sciences, and Chemistry.
An international team of interdisciplinary researchers have developed a new publication titled ‘Research Handbook on Oil and Gas Law’, edited by Professor Tina Soliman-Hunter and Dr Madeline Taylor from Macquarie Law School. Using a unique temporal lens, the publication examines core themes in the role of oil and gas from a past, present and future perspective, concluding with the challenges and opportunities for oil and gas and its role in energy transition.
Associate Professor Paul McKechnie, from the Department of History and Archaeology, has released a new book titled ‘A Monument More Lasting than Bronze: Classics in the University of Malawi 1982-2019’. The book explores Hastings Kamuzu Banda, then Life President of the Republic of Malawi, and his establishment of a Department of Classics in the University of Malawi. It analyses President Banda’s motives for this surreal intervention and the political goals it served, and also sketches out the shape the enterprise he called into being has taken - all in the context of worldwide transformations of Classics.