Contemporary Australian Photography 1980 to the present. Contemporary Australian art photography has burgeoned over the last 25 years but there is no dedicated book length study in the field. This project will fill this gap by putting Australian photography on an international scholarly agenda, which will generate more scholarship on Australian work. It will have enormous national and community benefit for Australian artists, curators and dealers and the general public who are keenly interested ....Contemporary Australian Photography 1980 to the present. Contemporary Australian art photography has burgeoned over the last 25 years but there is no dedicated book length study in the field. This project will fill this gap by putting Australian photography on an international scholarly agenda, which will generate more scholarship on Australian work. It will have enormous national and community benefit for Australian artists, curators and dealers and the general public who are keenly interested in photography. Read moreRead less
Experiencing space: sensory encounters from Baroque Rome to neo-baroque Las Vegas. This project focuses on the historical baroque and the neo-baroque and the relationship between them. The aim of the project is to apply a new methodology to the study of baroque and neo-baroque cultures, one grounded in sensory and spatial approaches. The primary case studies will be the cities of Rome and Las Vegas, two cities that are paradigmatic of the baroque and the neo-baroque. Whereas for theorists such a ....Experiencing space: sensory encounters from Baroque Rome to neo-baroque Las Vegas. This project focuses on the historical baroque and the neo-baroque and the relationship between them. The aim of the project is to apply a new methodology to the study of baroque and neo-baroque cultures, one grounded in sensory and spatial approaches. The primary case studies will be the cities of Rome and Las Vegas, two cities that are paradigmatic of the baroque and the neo-baroque. Whereas for theorists such as Jean Baudrillard argue that Las Vegas embodies the postmodern world in excess, this project will instead argue that it is emblematic of the return of a baroque aesthetics that has been nurtured by consumer culture, multi-media conglomeration and digital technology.Read moreRead less
Racial Classifications in Transnational Context: Aborigines and Islanders in Australia, Native Americans, African Americans and Afro-Brazilians. This ongoing project seeks to develop a new and more powerful scholarly paradigm for understanding race through a comparative historical study designed to identify features which are common to concepts of race as they have emerged and shifted in the different societies studied, and to distinguish these from features which are specific to particular soc ....Racial Classifications in Transnational Context: Aborigines and Islanders in Australia, Native Americans, African Americans and Afro-Brazilians. This ongoing project seeks to develop a new and more powerful scholarly paradigm for understanding race through a comparative historical study designed to identify features which are common to concepts of race as they have emerged and shifted in the different societies studied, and to distinguish these from features which are specific to particular societies and/or eras. In addition to developing and demonstrating the approach, the project will reanalyse the racialisation of the four colonised groups, each of which have figured centrally in studies of race. One monograph and at least three major journal articles will result.Read moreRead less
Transforming city spaces: street art, urban cultures, transnational networks. The appearance of urban spaces has a dramatic impact upon the lives of the citizens who live in them. In comparing a range of local and international cities, this project investigates ways in which street art, a new cultural practice, has been transforming experiences of cities, cultural practices and communities.
Avatars and Identities. The avatar, a virtual representation of its user, is the key element of interface technology for everyday computer use in the twenty-first century. While specialist aspects of the avatar have received intensive attention from the technology industries and scholars, the focus of the work to date has been on the technical efficiency of the interface, rather than understanding the full social implications of its use. Through a historical, ethnographic and critical analysis o ....Avatars and Identities. The avatar, a virtual representation of its user, is the key element of interface technology for everyday computer use in the twenty-first century. While specialist aspects of the avatar have received intensive attention from the technology industries and scholars, the focus of the work to date has been on the technical efficiency of the interface, rather than understanding the full social implications of its use. Through a historical, ethnographic and critical analysis of the role of the avatar, in consultation with industry, this project offers a unique opportunity to develop a wider perspective that will contribute to an understanding of the uses and policies for the digital economy.Read moreRead less
Urban images and the appearance of city spaces. This project will constitute the first study of street art as a new genre of cultural practice in city spaces. Street art is becoming an increasingly important issue for social policy and for youth culture. With many advocating a punitive approach to street art, the stakes for young people are high, risking criminalization in carrying out their art practices. The project will examine the emergence of street art and has significant strategic value i ....Urban images and the appearance of city spaces. This project will constitute the first study of street art as a new genre of cultural practice in city spaces. Street art is becoming an increasingly important issue for social policy and for youth culture. With many advocating a punitive approach to street art, the stakes for young people are high, risking criminalization in carrying out their art practices. The project will examine the emergence of street art and has significant strategic value in its capacity to inform balanced policy development and to improve understanding of the effects of and motivations behind street art.Read moreRead less
Xenologies: Discourses on aliens, foreigners and other races in transnational historical contexts. This project will identify and describe some of the ways in which Western societies have classified and characterised other societies. It will retrace the historical contexts under which such classifications have emerged and developed. A major example is the concept of race, which dates from the late-eighteenth century and developed in close association with the historical expansion of European ....Xenologies: Discourses on aliens, foreigners and other races in transnational historical contexts. This project will identify and describe some of the ways in which Western societies have classified and characterised other societies. It will retrace the historical contexts under which such classifications have emerged and developed. A major example is the concept of race, which dates from the late-eighteenth century and developed in close association with the historical expansion of European colonialism. The concept of race will be situated in the context of other Western discourses on aliens, foreigners, strangers and the like, a comparative procedure that will enhance scholarly understandings of the phenomena of race, racism and xenophobia.Read moreRead less
Reinventing Philosophy as a Way of Life. The core aim of this project is to examine modern re-inventions of the classical ideal of philosophy as a way of life. It will investigate the reanimation of this idea in post-Kantian philosophy, including well-known figures such as Nietzsche but also neglected figures such as Jean-Marie Guyau. The research will be highly significant in providing the first sustained study of how 19th and 20th century European philosophy transformed ancient philosophical s ....Reinventing Philosophy as a Way of Life. The core aim of this project is to examine modern re-inventions of the classical ideal of philosophy as a way of life. It will investigate the reanimation of this idea in post-Kantian philosophy, including well-known figures such as Nietzsche but also neglected figures such as Jean-Marie Guyau. The research will be highly significant in providing the first sustained study of how 19th and 20th century European philosophy transformed ancient philosophical schools, such as Epicureanism and Stoicism. Read moreRead less
Empathy and evolution: the history of emotions and the literary and visual representation of animals. A study of emotions in human and animals is a key area of contemporary research in both the sciences and humanities. It has crucial implications for our future. This project will investigate how humans have represented the emotions in literary and visual discourses from the eighteenth-century to the present.
Determinants of Audio-Visual effects in degraded and non-degraded speech. Seeing a speaker's face can affect the perception of their speech in a number of ways. This project proposes a detailed comparison of factors that affect Audio-Visual (AV) facilitation of degraded speech detection and identification. Detection-based tasks should be more sensitive to signal based correlations whereas identification-based effects more sensitive to complementary information. The significance of the current pr ....Determinants of Audio-Visual effects in degraded and non-degraded speech. Seeing a speaker's face can affect the perception of their speech in a number of ways. This project proposes a detailed comparison of factors that affect Audio-Visual (AV) facilitation of degraded speech detection and identification. Detection-based tasks should be more sensitive to signal based correlations whereas identification-based effects more sensitive to complementary information. The significance of the current proposal is that it offers both a strategy and a connected series of experiments for determining key behavioural constraints on AV speech integration. Understanding AV interactions will build links between neurophysiological processes and coherent perception and have important implications for AV application.Read moreRead less