Rethinking higher education persistence. This project aims to address the issue of early departure from university. Many students leave higher education and disproportionate numbers are from educationally disadvantaged groups, including first-in-family learners. Too often, the individual learner is 'blamed' for this departure and perceived as deficit in necessary knowledge. This project extends previous research into how first-in-family students manage and engage with higher education. Expected ....Rethinking higher education persistence. This project aims to address the issue of early departure from university. Many students leave higher education and disproportionate numbers are from educationally disadvantaged groups, including first-in-family learners. Too often, the individual learner is 'blamed' for this departure and perceived as deficit in necessary knowledge. This project extends previous research into how first-in-family students manage and engage with higher education. Expected outcomes include knowledge about university persistence behaviours and a capabilities informed framework to design and implement future retention strategies.Read moreRead less
Living With Uncertainty: Creating the Postmodern Self in Contemporary Australia. Life in postmodernity is marked by rapid change and uncertainty. Increasingly, as tradition is worn away, individuals must create new scripts to give life meaning and structure. Through a case study of gays and lesbians, this project will investigate how a group of Australians are creating postmodern selves. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it traces the relationship between discursive and psychological accounts of t ....Living With Uncertainty: Creating the Postmodern Self in Contemporary Australia. Life in postmodernity is marked by rapid change and uncertainty. Increasingly, as tradition is worn away, individuals must create new scripts to give life meaning and structure. Through a case study of gays and lesbians, this project will investigate how a group of Australians are creating postmodern selves. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it traces the relationship between discursive and psychological accounts of the postmodern self and their political effects. With a particular interest in emotional life, this study will provide critical information on how individuals and communities can manage creatively the uncertain conditions of postmodernity.Read moreRead less
Excellent researchers: Using learner profiles to enhance research learning. Recent evidence concerning metacognitive learning and affect reveals that research degree candidates are a diverse group of learners, and little is known about explaining wasteful attrition, stress and delays in progress. Such a study is essential, especially given the growth in research degrees, new transitional pathways, diversity in candidate backgrounds and chronic high attrition. This longitudinal study applies new ....Excellent researchers: Using learner profiles to enhance research learning. Recent evidence concerning metacognitive learning and affect reveals that research degree candidates are a diverse group of learners, and little is known about explaining wasteful attrition, stress and delays in progress. Such a study is essential, especially given the growth in research degrees, new transitional pathways, diversity in candidate backgrounds and chronic high attrition. This longitudinal study applies new findings about doctoral learning profiles in a direct intervention (DOCLearnPro) that targets individual differences across students in doctoral and master’s degrees to improve learning outcomes significantly and contribute theoretically, methodologically and substantively in order to advance understanding of researcher development.Read moreRead less
Braid groups via representation theory and machine learning. This project aims to address questions about the representation theory of braid groups with important consequences in low-dimensional topology. This project expects to make significant progress on central open problems surrounding knot invariants, and create new tools that will have wide applicability in representation theory. It will pioneer the use of highly innovative methods from category theory and machine learning recently develo ....Braid groups via representation theory and machine learning. This project aims to address questions about the representation theory of braid groups with important consequences in low-dimensional topology. This project expects to make significant progress on central open problems surrounding knot invariants, and create new tools that will have wide applicability in representation theory. It will pioneer the use of highly innovative methods from category theory and machine learning recently developed by the investigators. Potential benefits of this project include: the resolution of important long-standing conjectures about braid groups, the development of emerging technology with significant implications for representation theory, and the training of Australian scientists in a vital area of research.Read moreRead less
Memory, Induction, and Strategic Behaviour in Economic and Social Situations. This project will provide economists, game theorists and other social scientists with a theoretical framework to model players with limited memories, and to model the process by which they develop their subjective views. By giving a formal treatment of the problem of induction, it will help us to understand how people might come to have different views on the world. By capturing new aspects of bounded memory, it will e ....Memory, Induction, and Strategic Behaviour in Economic and Social Situations. This project will provide economists, game theorists and other social scientists with a theoretical framework to model players with limited memories, and to model the process by which they develop their subjective views. By giving a formal treatment of the problem of induction, it will help us to understand how people might come to have different views on the world. By capturing new aspects of bounded memory, it will extend our understanding of agents with bounded rationality. The emergence of sophisticated strategic concepts and behavioural implications of these subjective views in society can also be described and discussed in this framework. Read moreRead less
Reading the Social Future of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service. This project investigates how and if the Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS) is building social capital. It does this by interrogating existing practices and operations at the ARCBS and by surveying donors and non-donors. This project aims to develop a Deleuzian critique of the notion of social capital.
Agency and Change in Institutionalised Organisations: The role of volunteers as institutional agents in the non-profit sector. This project intends to test recent developments in neoinstitutional organisational theory. The theoretical model developed is designed to address two questions bedvilling the genre: the role of human agency in institutional processes, and understanding institutional change. These questions are addressed in two ways: first, it takes voluntarism as an example of agency ....Agency and Change in Institutionalised Organisations: The role of volunteers as institutional agents in the non-profit sector. This project intends to test recent developments in neoinstitutional organisational theory. The theoretical model developed is designed to address two questions bedvilling the genre: the role of human agency in institutional processes, and understanding institutional change. These questions are addressed in two ways: first, it takes voluntarism as an example of agency in action; and second, it is located in the non-profit sector, an organisational field undergoing significant change. The project employs a micro-sociological methodological orientation rarely used in neoinstitutional research; that of non-participant observation and conversation analysis.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE240100144
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$444,447.00
Summary
Universal Model Selection Criteria for Scientific Machine Learning. This project aims to develop provably reliable universal model selection criteria to facilitate trustworthy scientific machine learning. Combining stochastic methods with an innovative geometric approach to basic statistical principles, this project expects to characterise, combine, and refine the most successful heuristics for designing and training huge models, such as deep neural networks, into a cohesive theoretical framewor ....Universal Model Selection Criteria for Scientific Machine Learning. This project aims to develop provably reliable universal model selection criteria to facilitate trustworthy scientific machine learning. Combining stochastic methods with an innovative geometric approach to basic statistical principles, this project expects to characterise, combine, and refine the most successful heuristics for designing and training huge models, such as deep neural networks, into a cohesive theoretical framework. The expected outcomes include a general toolkit for assisting neural network design at the forefront of scientific applications. This should significantly improve the quality of scientific predictions by facilitating confident adoption of deep learning methods into the pantheon of trustworthy modeling techniques. Read moreRead less
Eyewitness identification: Metacognitive influences on choosing behaviour. There is major national and community interest in the successful conduct of criminal investigations. This research addresses the two most significant problems associated with the conduct of eyewitness identification tests: mistaken identifications of innocent suspects and failure to identify guilty suspects when they are present in the lineup. Progress on the latter problem - which results in offenders avoiding detection ....Eyewitness identification: Metacognitive influences on choosing behaviour. There is major national and community interest in the successful conduct of criminal investigations. This research addresses the two most significant problems associated with the conduct of eyewitness identification tests: mistaken identifications of innocent suspects and failure to identify guilty suspects when they are present in the lineup. Progress on the latter problem - which results in offenders avoiding detection - would be a major contribution with national impact. As well as the obvious implications for the conduct of lineups, the international collaboration on the project will increase the visibility of Australian social science research and provide crucial development opportunities for young Australian scientists.Read moreRead less