Research at the National Centre for Australian Studies
Research news
Linkage success for the National Centre for Australian Studies Professor Bruce Scates
Professor Bruce Scates Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies has secured over $300,000 in funding in the latest ARC linkage round. View
details about the project.
Alongside a proven reputation for excellence in teaching, the National Centre for Australian Studies:
- fosters national and international research collaborations with partners right across Asia and the world. View information about our international connections
- attracts highly competitive research funding from leading national and international agencies
- builds linkages to industry and the wider community in innovative and successful research collaboration. View examples of our community engagement
- boasts a team of internationally acclaimed experts in the field of Australian studies offering quality supervision to quality students. View staff profiles
Research strengths
Our research strengths support and add to Faculty of Arts strengths in Australian Studies, particularly:
- Austrailan governance and public policy
- Australian literary and historical studies
- Australian urban and regional studies
- Cross-cultural, multicultural and Australian Indigenous studies
- Communications, media studies and new technologies
- Biography and biographical studies
- International relations and security studies
- Tourism and mobility
- Sport and society
- The growth of consumerism and publishing studies
Success in competitive grants
Staff of the National Centre for Australian Studies have secured coveted research grants in many fields of the humantities. This includes funding from national and international bodies, most notably the Australian Research Council's (ARC) linkage and discovery schemes and fellowships hosted by the National Library of Australia.Linkage Success for the National Centre for Australian Studies
Professor Bruce Scates Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies has secured over $300,000 in funding in the latest ARC linkage round. His project involves the first extended study of soldier settlement in New South Wales, which ‘opened up’ vast tracts of the state in the aftermath of the Great War. ‘A Land Fit for Heroes’ involves collaboration with Department of Veterans’ Affairs and State Records NSW. Based on recently opened archives it will address emerging themes in transnational and environmental history, enrich regional/community histories and recover the largely forgotten experience of soldier settlers and their families as they battled with the land.
“The digger has an iconographic status in Australian society”, Professor Scates commented “and thousands of families have charted the service records of relatives who served in the first AIF. This project will recover the returned soldier as important an historical entity as the men (and women) who went to war. It will look at ways our society tried to recover from the trauma of war, examine veterans’ return to Australia and their difficult readjustment to civil society”. The project is perfectly placed in the National Centre for Australian Studies addressing as it does issues of national significance. “Like many in regional NSW today soldier settlers struggled against isolation, drought and financial hardship. This project will evaluate the role soldier settlement played in populating remote districts and assess its long-term environmental impacts”.
Included in the grant is an Australian Postgraduate Scholarship and amongst the projected outcomes is a website charting the fate of some 9000 settlers. Professor Scates’ fellow chief investigators are A/Professor Melanie Oppenheimer and Christine Yates (State Records, NSW).