Civilizing Divorce: Social Change, Law and the Transformation of Parenthood. The project will leave policy-makers, professionals, law reformers, and parents and their children themselves, better equipped to navigate their way through a major process of transformation in the way our intimate lives are structured. It will help take some of the 'heat' out of the child custody debate, to see current changes as an integral part of a broader process of change in our emotional relationships, and to br ....Civilizing Divorce: Social Change, Law and the Transformation of Parenthood. The project will leave policy-makers, professionals, law reformers, and parents and their children themselves, better equipped to navigate their way through a major process of transformation in the way our intimate lives are structured. It will help take some of the 'heat' out of the child custody debate, to see current changes as an integral part of a broader process of change in our emotional relationships, and to broaden the conceptual resources available to policy-making and law reform concerning post-separation child custody.Read moreRead less
HEIGHT, WEIGHT and LENGTH: Biometric explorations of Australia's socio-economic fabric in the long run, 1860-1970. HEIGHT, WEIGHT and LENGTH is a biometric analysis of Australian living standards. This project is significant because it illuminates the very fabric of Australian social and economic organisation. It traces what happened to living standards over the long run 1860-1970, covering booms, busts and wars. It examines the functioning of the family as an economic unit at the core of dis ....HEIGHT, WEIGHT and LENGTH: Biometric explorations of Australia's socio-economic fabric in the long run, 1860-1970. HEIGHT, WEIGHT and LENGTH is a biometric analysis of Australian living standards. This project is significant because it illuminates the very fabric of Australian social and economic organisation. It traces what happened to living standards over the long run 1860-1970, covering booms, busts and wars. It examines the functioning of the family as an economic unit at the core of distributing welfare-enhancing resources. It identifies who were the winners and the losers. It teaches lessons about vulnerability and strength during economic change that should inform future policy makers. Finally, it pushes the methodology in new directions with implications for its use around the world.Read moreRead less
UNDERSTANDING COLONIAL AUSTRALIA / BUILDING A NATIONAL RESOURCE. Understanding colonial Australia uses new methods with old data to penetrate the workings of the convict labour markets, the levels of wellbeing they supported, and the ways in which families distributed those resources among their members. Australia's position in the league-table of living standards is established against the four countries which contributed people to European Australia: England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The o ....UNDERSTANDING COLONIAL AUSTRALIA / BUILDING A NATIONAL RESOURCE. Understanding colonial Australia uses new methods with old data to penetrate the workings of the convict labour markets, the levels of wellbeing they supported, and the ways in which families distributed those resources among their members. Australia's position in the league-table of living standards is established against the four countries which contributed people to European Australia: England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The outcome is a history of wellbeing and inequality in colonial Australia. A spin-off from this research is the creation of a unique national resource: a computerised longitudinal data base on Australia's first white citizens, the convicts.Read moreRead less