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Arts Research Bulletin - Edition 2

Friday 16th January 2009

Menzies Building

Note from the Associate Dean Research

Dear Colleagues,
Happy New Year – let’s hope it is a stimulating and productive time ahead for all. Salutations, in particular, to those who spent part of the festive season shaping their ARC applications. Could I urge you to make the effort to meet the Faculty deadlines (see below), so that we can arrange feedback from external readers to help submit the strongest applications possible. More generally, I hope that we can maintain momentum from last year. There are many Linkage projects in development throughout the Faculty, and staff in the Arts Research Office are more than willing to assist with these in whatever way they can. Similarly, I am happy to meet with anyone who needs assistance in furthering cross-faculty research opportunities, and Katherine de Zilwa (ext. 58547) is available to assist researchers with identifying grant opportunities, especially for smaller projects that are not yet ready for national competitive grant funding.

Professor Pauline Nestor
Associate Dean Arts Research

External Research Grants

Grant Success:

Collier Charitable Fund

The Collier Charitable Fund offers financial assistance towards the purchase of equipment to be used for teaching or research purposes. In the round announced in late 2008, six out of a total of nine applications from the Arts Faculty were awarded funding.

Congratulations to the following Collier grant recipients:

Updates:

ARC Deadlines for 2009:

Discovery - Funding commencing in 2010:

In order for applications to be sent to an external reader for review, they must be submitted on the ARC DP 2010 application form (GAMS included) to the Arts Research Office by Monday 19th January 2009.

The final application after the review process must be submitted to the Arts Research Office by Monday 2nd February 2009. (Applications received after this deadline will require approval from the Associate Dean Research before they are forwarded to the Monash Research Office).

Faculty Research Grants

Updates

Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA):

The ERA is a Rudd Government initiative to measure and assess research quality and activity in Australian universities and to compare it to overseas institutions. It is being developed and administered primarily by the Australian Research Council (ARC). The ERA will measure research quality and activity at discipline level and unlike the RQF, which was based on selected groups and research outputs, the ERA will include all eligible research outputs from all eligible researchers. The institution that a researcher's work is reported through will be determined by the location of their appointment as of 31 March 2008. Honoraries' outputs will also be included though there are some additional eligibility criteria for Honorary staff members. Field of Research (FoR) codes will be used to assign research outputs to disciplines. So when assigning FoR code(s) to particular research, e.g. for a publication, researchers must make selections carefully. The ERA will inlcude all eligible research publications from the period 1 January 2002 to 31 December 2007 and all eligible non-publication outputs from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2007.

The ERA is still being developed and in late December 2008 the ARC released two more key documents concerning its implementation. These papers provide details of the range of indicators that will be used. The indicators are intended to be vaild and robust measures of research quality in various disciplines. They include measures like: journal rankings, citation analysis, volume of publications by publications type, FTE of eligible researchers, research grant income and esteem (contributions / roles that are considered prestigious). Different sets of indicators will be used for different disciplines. Copies of these papers can be found at the ERA site.

For further information, please contact either Fiona.Neilson@arts.monash.edu.au or Jeanette.Wrench@arts.monash.edu.au or visit the Arts ERA page.

Research Grants in 2009

Please see Internal Funding Schemes for further information about the internal grant opportunities available to Arts Faculty staff in 2009.

Graduate Researchers in Print (GRiP): Open for nominations in 2009

GRiP is a facilitated, peer-supported writing for publication program for Arts postgraduate research students which has run successfully through ARGS since 2005. The program has received excellent feedback from past participants and provides both valuable and practical experience in publication.

In 2009, Dr Kate Cregan will be convening the program while Dr Ceridwen Spark is on maternity leave. Kate has an impressive publication and grant track record accross a range of disciplines, and extensive experience in mentoring postgraduate students.

Nominations of postgraduate research students who have been successfuly confirmed are now welcome. For further information, please visit the GRiP webpage.

Successful Grants Library

There is an extensive library of successful ARC submissions located in the Arts Research Office which are available for prospective ARC applicants to obtain copies. For further information, please contact Katherine.DeZilwa@arts.monash.edu.au

Arts Researcher - Dr Jane Lydon,

Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies

Dr Jane Lydon

What are you currently researching?

I recently began a new four-year ARC funded project titled Aboriginal Visual Histories. This will for the first time review photographs of Aboriginal people in key collections around Australia and in Europe, and will produce the first systematic history of photographing Aboriginal people from the Australian inception if the medium in 1841 to the present day. An integral aspect of this research will be collaboration with descendants to incorporate Indigenous perspectives.

Where has your research taken you?

I originally trained in archaeology and I spent much of my twenties working on digs, including the sites of Petra and Pella in Jordan, Norfolk Island, the Rocks in Sydney, and last year I concluded a project at the former Ebenezer Mission, in north-western Victoria. One exotic moment was trying to record archaeological remains at Pella while simultaneously chatting politely with an army patrol and chasing goats out of the trench! A more poignant experience was finding evidence in the archives that a white settler in the Clarence River region had given poisoned flour to local Aboriginal people - a series of depositions had been filed in the wrong place so when I finally found them I had a real sense of unearthing a hidden tragedy.

What facet of Monash University contributes most to your research?

The Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies is a fabulous place to work because my Indigenous colleagues and students remind me every day that my historical research has to engage with the real world. It is also a very friendly environment! Monash has also been very flexible over the last few years, during which I have had two children and returned to work part-time.

What have you enjoyed the most about undertaking research in your subject area?

I love the fact that everyone finds old photographs interesting and accessible - while this means that people might disagree with my interpretation of them, it makes me feel that I'm working on an important aspect of our heritage. Aboriginal people value such images tremendously - although many were taken for exploitative purposes, descendants can see quite different meanings within them - as evidence for family culture and life on traditional country.

What has been the greatest challenge?

As a white academic I struggle to find ways not to speak for Aboriginal people, and to develop genuinely collaborative relationships with them. Universities reward us for publishing, but Indigenous people are not always so focused on books and articles! It is important to design my research so that it address Aboriginal objectives as well as my own, and to communicate the results of my work clearly.

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