Automatic Authorities: Charting a Course for Legitimate AI. Public and private actors are increasingly using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to exercise power over citizens, who are increasingly unsure whether to accept that power. AI faces a crisis of legitimacy. This project aims to use technically- and empirically-grounded philosophy to make Australia a global leader in the study and design of legitimate AI. The project expects to launch and make fundamental progress in a new field: the Politica ....Automatic Authorities: Charting a Course for Legitimate AI. Public and private actors are increasingly using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to exercise power over citizens, who are increasingly unsure whether to accept that power. AI faces a crisis of legitimacy. This project aims to use technically- and empirically-grounded philosophy to make Australia a global leader in the study and design of legitimate AI. The project expects to launch and make fundamental progress in a new field: the Political Philosophy of AI. Expected outcomes include new strategies shared with industry and government partners for designing and deploying legitimate AI systems. Expected benefits include the opportunity to enjoy the public and private efficiencies enabled by AI, without compromising our freedom and equality.Read moreRead less
Expectations and commitments in the Australia-USA alliance. This project aims to investigate the gap between the high expectations of mutual support and the lack of detailed security commitments in the Australia-US Alliance. The project intends to use a focused approach that captures thematic aspects of the alliance through project frames and historical slices across time. Expected outcomes can advance understanding of how alliances operate as security institutions. The outcomes can help to prom ....Expectations and commitments in the Australia-USA alliance. This project aims to investigate the gap between the high expectations of mutual support and the lack of detailed security commitments in the Australia-US Alliance. The project intends to use a focused approach that captures thematic aspects of the alliance through project frames and historical slices across time. Expected outcomes can advance understanding of how alliances operate as security institutions. The outcomes can help to promote a more informed national conversation about the costs and benefits of Australia's security relationship with the United States of America (USA) and contribute to debates over the future of the Australia-USA Alliance during a period of strategic uncertainty.Read moreRead less
Promissory Democratic Representation: Campaign Promises in Australia. This project aims to investigate the extent to which campaign promises made by politicians are kept or broken. It intends to conduct new research on Australian politics while advancing an established international research program. This project expects to generate and disseminate new knowledge that is urgently needed due to declining levels of trust among citizens in politicians. The expected outcomes include new theory and in ....Promissory Democratic Representation: Campaign Promises in Australia. This project aims to investigate the extent to which campaign promises made by politicians are kept or broken. It intends to conduct new research on Australian politics while advancing an established international research program. This project expects to generate and disseminate new knowledge that is urgently needed due to declining levels of trust among citizens in politicians. The expected outcomes include new theory and internationally comparative evidence on which campaign promises are kept and broken. This should provide significant benefits, such as greater public awareness of actual levels of promise keeping. It should also benefit policymakers who use campaign promises to anticipate and prepare government policies.Read moreRead less
Children's displacement and humanitarian protection in the Global South. This Fellowship project aims to demonstrate how child protection is central to the dynamics of forced migration and the key to robust humanitarian programs in protracted crises. Through a comparison of operational measures in child marriage, trafficking, child labour, and sexual abuse, the research expects to develop new insights in humanitarian protection. Outcomes and benefits include a new theoretical framework of protec ....Children's displacement and humanitarian protection in the Global South. This Fellowship project aims to demonstrate how child protection is central to the dynamics of forced migration and the key to robust humanitarian programs in protracted crises. Through a comparison of operational measures in child marriage, trafficking, child labour, and sexual abuse, the research expects to develop new insights in humanitarian protection. Outcomes and benefits include a new theoretical framework of protection in emergencies and the design of scalable tools that offer actionable advice for policymakers and practitioners. The project will enhance Australia’s capacity to engage strategically in delivering humanitarian aid that contributes to children and young people’s meaningful protection in forced migration contexts.Read moreRead less
The effect of unconventional advocates on public support for climate policy. This project aims to discover whether the presence of unconventional climate advocates in public debate can foster broad-based support for climate policy in Australia. Unconventional advocates include political conservatives, farmers, resource industry workers, and businesspeople. The project expects to generate new knowledge about the role of intersectional social identities in contentious policy debates. Expected outc ....The effect of unconventional advocates on public support for climate policy. This project aims to discover whether the presence of unconventional climate advocates in public debate can foster broad-based support for climate policy in Australia. Unconventional advocates include political conservatives, farmers, resource industry workers, and businesspeople. The project expects to generate new knowledge about the role of intersectional social identities in contentious policy debates. Expected outcomes of this project include evidence-based insights on how to reduce social division about climate policy. This should provide significant benefits such as guidance for policy actors for how to overcome social cleavages to implement climate policy, with relevance to other contentious policy domains.Read moreRead less
Urbanising Western China: Nation-building on the Sino-Tibetan frontier. This project aims to explore urbanisation as a key part of the Chinese Communist Party's policies in Tibet and the novel opportunities it affords for Tibetan identity, language, and culture. An international, multidisciplinary team will combine analysis of key government texts, interviews with government officials and ethnic minority elites, as well as observations of daily life amongst urban Tibetans. The project will produ ....Urbanising Western China: Nation-building on the Sino-Tibetan frontier. This project aims to explore urbanisation as a key part of the Chinese Communist Party's policies in Tibet and the novel opportunities it affords for Tibetan identity, language, and culture. An international, multidisciplinary team will combine analysis of key government texts, interviews with government officials and ethnic minority elites, as well as observations of daily life amongst urban Tibetans. The project will produce new understandings of the challenges of governing diversity in China, and will benefit Australia by exploring a fundamental aspect of the changing social fabric of our region’s dominant power.Read moreRead less
Feasibility in politics: Taking account of groups and institutions. This project aims to research feasibility in politics. Normative political discourse is pervaded by the use of claims about what is feasible and infeasible. The project will examine feasibility practices, the functions they serve, what is required to serve the functions effectively, how actual practices stack up, and how to improve them. It will fuse philosophical and empirical analysis; encompass three salient case studies (imm ....Feasibility in politics: Taking account of groups and institutions. This project aims to research feasibility in politics. Normative political discourse is pervaded by the use of claims about what is feasible and infeasible. The project will examine feasibility practices, the functions they serve, what is required to serve the functions effectively, how actual practices stack up, and how to improve them. It will fuse philosophical and empirical analysis; encompass three salient case studies (immigration, poverty and climate change); and engage practitioners, commentators and ordinary citizens. The project intends to inform the development of just and effective immigration, poverty and climate change policy, reflecting a better understanding of the role of feasibility in politics.Read moreRead less
Environmental Justice and the Making of Just Food and Energy Policy. This project aims to improve two key areas of environmental policy by investigating the meaning of environmental justice and how it is best implemented. It will generate a significant new framework of the idea of environmental justice and offer innovative research that demonstrates what hinders and enables just policies in practice. Expected outcomes of this project include an updated and enhanced theory of environmental justic ....Environmental Justice and the Making of Just Food and Energy Policy. This project aims to improve two key areas of environmental policy by investigating the meaning of environmental justice and how it is best implemented. It will generate a significant new framework of the idea of environmental justice and offer innovative research that demonstrates what hinders and enables just policies in practice. Expected outcomes of this project include an updated and enhanced theory of environmental justice, a new understanding of the enablers and barriers to its implementation in practice, and recommendations to make policies on urban food security and energy transition more just. Overall, the project should provide the benefit of the development of more just policies on two key environmental issues facing Australia.Read moreRead less
Local politics, governance and public goods in Southeast Asia. This project aims to investigate how variations in local government across four Southeast Asian states affect the delivery of critical public goods such as infrastructure and healthcare to citizens. The project will compare governance regimes across 16 municipalities in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. Expected outcomes include an improved understanding of how varying political dynamics can shape state-citizen inte ....Local politics, governance and public goods in Southeast Asia. This project aims to investigate how variations in local government across four Southeast Asian states affect the delivery of critical public goods such as infrastructure and healthcare to citizens. The project will compare governance regimes across 16 municipalities in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. Expected outcomes include an improved understanding of how varying political dynamics can shape state-citizen interactions and access to services at a local level. The findings will enhance understanding of local politics, a topic of growing scholarly interest, and also benefit Australian and other policy makers seeking to enhance the design of development interventions.Read moreRead less
Global Citizen Deliberation: Analysing a Deliberative Documentary. The project will enact and film the world’s first truly global citizens’ deliberation, a global citizens’ assembly (GCA) on genome editing, and proceed to analyse the impact of the ‘deliberative documentary’ film on public understanding of complex, fast-evolving science and technology. It will investigate the cross-cultural capacity of citizens to deliberate complex value-laden issues, and so ascertain prospects for an informed g ....Global Citizen Deliberation: Analysing a Deliberative Documentary. The project will enact and film the world’s first truly global citizens’ deliberation, a global citizens’ assembly (GCA) on genome editing, and proceed to analyse the impact of the ‘deliberative documentary’ film on public understanding of complex, fast-evolving science and technology. It will investigate the cross-cultural capacity of citizens to deliberate complex value-laden issues, and so ascertain prospects for an informed global public response to challenges posed by genome editing. Research will test the effects of the deliberative documentary on viewers, examining benefits of communicating complex issues via the work of the GCA. Other benefits include improving public trust in governance and advancing the Australian film industry.
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