Humanities and Social Sciences

News Archive

News

News

TfC Launch

The Centre held its inaugural launch as a Key University Research Centre on 28th May, 2004. The event welcomed the External Board and new Associate Researchers to the Centre, as well as outlining some of the plans for 2004.

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New Scholars Bursaries

In 2004 TfC launched a series of small funding schemes for emerging researchers and postgraduates at UTS. Bursaries were awarded to scholars and students for project development, publications and dissemination of TfC related research. Applications are now closed.

Three UTS researchers were awarded Early Career Researchers bursaries of $750 to assist them to develop research applications related to the core interests of TfC over the next six months. The awards are made with the understanding that TfC - the Director, but hopefully also other Centre Researchers with a core interest and expertise in the topic - will be available to discuss their work. TfC will also afford the bursary holders opportunities to discuss their ideas with active researchers in the Centre and in UTS who have mutual intellectual interests.

Dr Michelle Langford - Narratives of Return: New Developments in Film and Cultural Production in Iranian Diasporas (Cultural Interaction and New Media / Transnational Cultures). This project takes the phenomenon of diasporic film (with a focus on Iranian film-makers; Babak Shokrian and David Fariborz Davoodian) in order to discuss experience of cultural return, the emergence of alternative cultural identities (the new Persians in the US) in exile, and the impact of exile and return on the visual imaginaries of diasporic film-makers and their audiences.

Eurydice Aroney - Acoustic Ecologies (International Activism / Place and Environment). This project aims to develop a postgraduate practice-based research proposal investigating acoustic environmental action in the national parks in the US, in heritage listed sites in Japan and in relation to the underwater environment of Hawaii.

Dr Stephen Gapps - Mobile Monuments: An Investigation of Place, Memory and Performance (Cultural History). This is a proposed postdoctoral project, which examines how historical re-enactment, the 'performance of history' allows marginalised histories to be included in the process of creating and maintaining public memory in Australia and other settler societies.

Five postgraduate Doctoral Research Dissemination bursaries of $500 have been awarded. This scheme was designed to assist postgraduates with an opportunity for publishing, or in some other way to disseminate their work, or to meet the costs of preparation.

Ricky Subritzky current (Cultural Interaction and New Media). current investigates the use of wireless telecommunications technologies in broadcasting. The bursary will assist in developing a proof of concept demonstrator, leading to the development of a prototype with an industry partner.

Tatiana Pentes (Cultural Interaction and New Media) exhibited her installation BlackBOX at Kudos Gallery (6 Napier Street, Paddington, Sydney) from September 28 - October 2, 2004. The bursary assisted with partial funding of the software costs and a small catalogue.

Michelle Moo (Cultural History) launched her novella Glory this published by local consumption publications on September 28th with bursary assistance.

Christen Cornell (Cultural Interaction and New Media) has been supported to write a paper from the New Urbanism public talks  held at the UTS gallery on 31 August, 2004, which was held in conjunction with this exhibition by emerging Chinese photography and video artists.

Francis Maravillas (Cultural Interaction and New Media) has been supported to write a paper on the work of artists who migrated from China to Australia in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The paper will be published in Jeroen de Kloet & Edwin Jurriens (eds.) Cosmopatriots: Globalization, Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary Asian Culture/s (Rodopi Press, Amsterdam, forthcoming 2005).

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Book Launch
Isabel Flick: the many lives of an extraordinary Aboriginal woman, co-authored by Isabel Flick and Associate Professor Heather Goodall (published by Allen and Unwin) was launched at UTS on May 5, 2004.


Trans/forming Cultures' researcher, Associate Professor Heather Goodall, and co-author Isabel Flick win the Magarey Prize and Medal for Biography
This award for the book, Isabel Flick: the many lives of an extraordinary Aboriginal Woman (Allen and Unwin, 2004) was presented to the authors on July 3. The Magarey Prize and Medal for Biography is given to the best biographical writing on an Australian Subject.  The prize money was to be donated, like the book's royalties, to the Rona-Tranby Foundation for Aboriginal Oral History.

The State of China Atlas
Centre Director Stephanie Donald and Robert Benwick, Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex have a new book: The State of China Atlas, Mapping the world's fastest growing economy (UNSW Press, 2005); which maps the profound changes that are occurring in China as it becomes a market economy.  It situates China's position in world economic growth, its trading patterns and partners, and looks at Chinese military power and the Chinese diaspora.  Download Press Release (pdf).

Ancient and Modern: Time, Culture and Indigenous Philosophy, by Stephen Muecke was launched by Larissa Behrendt on Wednesday 24th November 2004 at Gleebooks.

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Arts Programming Report
Professor Liz Jacka has recently completed a report on arts programming on the ABC. This study was commissioned by the Community and Public Sector Union who were concerned about cuts in the ABC's coverage of the arts. The report looks at all platforms - radio, television and online, and concludes that the amount of arts programming has diminished in the last ten years. It also notes a move from specialist arts programming to a more populist style which emphasises personality-driven content rather than content which is built on expert knowledge. Download the full report (209KB PDF).

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Visiting Professor
Professor Liu Fande from the Australian Research Centre at the Chinese Academy of Social Science was a visiting fellow for a two week period at the Key Centre for Communication and Culture: Trans/forming Cultures from August 3rd 2004  for two weeks.

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ARC Grant Results
Congratulations to Transforming Cultures researchers successful in the recent ARC Discovery grant round:

Local Noise: Indigenising Hip hop in Australasia ($218,000 over 3 years)
Dr Tony Mitchell, Prof Alistair Pennycook (and Dr S Pearson)
Voyages of Myth: Captain Cook in the Popular Australian Imagination ($188,363 over 3 years)
Prof Stephen Muecke and Dr Katrina Schlunke
Land of the Black Stump: a history of Australia's Inland Corridor 1815 - 2005 ($318, 050 over 3 years)
A/Prof AJ Mayne, Dr C Fahey, A/Prof R Frances, Dr LE Frost, A/Prof Heather Goodall, Dr J Gregory, Prof PA Grimshaw, Dr RQ Harrison, Dr RG Hosking, Prof RA Nile
Contact zones: activism, art and media in Italy, 1994 - 2006 ($157,000 over 3 years)
Dr Ilaria Vanni

And to A/Prof Heather Goodall and Dr Denis Byrne (TFC Associate Researcher) for their ARC Linkage Grant:  Parklands, culture and communities: strategic research for building social, cultural and environmental capital in urban parklands ($141 054 over 3 years)

2005 ARC Grant announced - Trans/forming Cultures reseachers & the United Muslim Women Association - Muslim Women's Networks in contemporary Australia: 1980-2005
Trans/forming Cultures researchers, Prof. SJ Donald, Dr. D Ghosh, Dr. C Ho, A/t Professor H Goodall and researchers from the United Muslim Women Association, Mrs MK Abdo and Ms G Dadoun, were successful in obtaining a 2005 ARC Linkage Grant to undertake research into Muslim Women's Networks in contemporary Australia 1980 - 2005.

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Professor Andrew Jakubowicz, with the Office of the Board of Studies NSW, wins the 'Best Secondary Educational website' for Making Multicultural Australia in the 21st century.
Prof. Andrew Jakubowicz of UTS and the Office of the Board of Studies NSW, were awarded an Australian Publishers Association and The Australian newspaper annual Excellence in Educational Publishing award for the website Making Multicultural Australia in the 21st century (http://www.multiculturalaustralia.gov.au).

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