Launch of new HRI biennial research theme 'identity transformations'
On 17 May 2013 the Hon Bob Hawke AC launched the Hawke's biennial research theme for 2013–2015: identity transformations. The launch was attended by Vice Chancellor David Lloyd, Pro Vice Chancellor Pal Ahluwalia, and researchers from across the university.
Hawke Director Prof Anthony Elliott explained that identity has become one of the pressing issues of our times. 'From anti-globalisation protestors to new ecological warriors', he said, 'from devotees of therapy culture to defenders of international human rights: the culture of identity politics is fast redefining the public political sphere. Our research will interrogate and explore these trends looking at the issues through historical, sociological, psychological, cultural, aesthetic, spatial, postmodern and feminist perspectives.'
More information will be available soon about research nodes and opportunites. HRI researchers will be investigating identity transformations from a multitude of perspectives, using a range of approaches and methodologies.
Prof Elliott gave some examples: 'We want to explore globalisation and the effects of the global electronic economy; trauma, memory and amnesia in the context of modern mobility and diaspora; creative identity and responses to disasters, emergenices and catastrophes; poetic evolutions and new art forms relating to identities; narrative transformations of identities; identities in the frame of gender, feminism and the body; and identity politics in a post-national constellation.'
The brave new world of work
Read Prof Anthony Elliott's comment in The Conversation on the disposable workforce, criminalisation of employees, and electronic tagging to monitor the productivity of factory workers.
The HRI and the Malaysian election
As Malaysia went to the polls Dr Amrita Malhi, Hawke Postdoctoral Research Fellow, provided opinions and interviews for the media on race politics, foreign workers, corruption and the close election result. See The Australian, Inside Story, New Mandala (on foreign workers and on Kuala Lumpur's 'Little India'), ABC News 24 and Radio 2SER Sydney.
Book launch: Locating cultural work
Assoc Prof Susan Luckman's new book Locating cultural work was launched on 1 May 2013 at the Kerry Packer Civic Gallery, City West, by Dr Mark Banks, Reader in Sociology, Open University, UK.
Locating cultural work builds upon the ground-breaking work already undertaken by the author filling the absence of research into the significance, character and value of creative industries beyond major urban centres. What has emerged in this work is the centrality of place, time and the natural environment to the creative practice of those who have chosen or found themselves operating outside the mainstream of urban creative milieus. Unlike any existing book in the market, Locating cultural work examines creative workers in terms of three interlinked concerns: the wider history of creativity and place in the UK since the Industrial Revolution (in particular the Romantics and the Arts and Craft Movement, especially as manifest in the Lake District and Cotswolds); the emotional drivers of creativity and place; and the relationship between rural and regional cultural industries, tourism and environmental awareness.
Prof Elliott a 'person to watch in 2013'
The Australian (13 March 2013) has named Hawke Director Anthony Elliott one of the 20 'people to watch in 2013' in education. View the list, which also includes UniSA Vice Chancellor David Lloyd.
This is what The Australian said:
As director of UniSA's high-profile Hawke Institute, Elliott brings a blue-chip CV and prolific research ethic. He has an ability to put social sciences into the common idiom. To get him, UniSA had to import Elliott's entire team from Flinders University. He has ambitions for a national role for the centre, named after former prime minister Bob Hawke. Easier said than done in Adelaide, a town that tends to internalise itself.
'World under siege' with Prof Charles Lemert
Social theorist Prof Charles Lemert spoke 'in conversation' with Prof Anthony Elliott and Assoc Prof Jennifer Rutherford on 6 March 2013, discussing the human world under siege. The event was presented by the Hawke Centre and the Hawke Research Institute. It was broadcast on ABC Radio National's 'Big ideas' program on 2 May.
Watch the video or listen to the podcast.
HRI featured in comments on Senator Xenophon's expulsion from Malaysia
Dr Amrita Malhi, a Research Fellow in the Hawke Research Institute, has featured prominently in extensive national and international media coverage of Senator Nick Xenophon’s detention and deportation from Malaysia. So far, Amrita has provided commentary to various national ABC outlets, including Radio National and News 24, and the ABC’s Radio Australia and Australia Network, broadcast across the Asia-Pacific. Amrita has also been quoted in the Adelaide Advertiser, and has published an op-ed piece with The Conversation.
New Deputy Director: Assoc Prof Jennifer Rutherford
Assoc Prof Jennifer Rutherford has joined the Hawke Research Institute as Deputy Director. Assoc Prof Rutherford was previously Associate Professor of Sociology at Flinders University. She holds degrees in sociology, the sciences of language and social anthropology, and has trained as a psychoanalyst with the Ecole de la Cause Freudienne, Paris. She was the Foundation Convener of the Australian Studies Program at ANU from 1994 to 1998 and has held research fellowships in English at the University of Sydney, and in cultural studies at Macquarie University.
Assoc Prof Rutherford's research interest is interdisciplinary in focus, bringing together the humanities and social sciences coupled with writing and visual representation. Her chief research fields involve social theory, and psychoanalytic investigations of Australian social, cultural and literary texts. Other research interests include the poetics of space, nationalism and the politics of the far right, visual sociology, literary theory and creative research. She has won Australian research grants totalling over $600,000. Jennifer has written three books and edited two others, with two titles forthcoming (2012/2013); contributed 11 book chapters; and produced a documentary film titled Ordinary people, along with numerous journal articles and keynote addresses.
Postdoctoral Fellowship for Transregional Research
Dr Amrita Malhi, a Hawke postdoctoral resarch fellow, has been awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship for Transregional Research: Inter-Asian Contexts and Connections by the US-based Social Science Research Council (SSRC) under its Inter-Asia Program. Amrita’s award is worth USD $20,000, for a project entitled ‘Making Subjects, Making Worlds: Islam, Revolution and Planetary Solidarities’, and will cover research travel to campuses, archives and libraries in Amsterdam, London and Berkeley in 2013. This is the first SSRC grant awarded to an academic staff member at UniSA.
ARC successes
Congratulations to these Hawke researchers who have won ARC grants, announced in November 2012:
- Prof Suzanne Franzway and Dr Nicole Moulding (with Dr Sarah Wendt, Dr Carole Zufferey and Prof Donna Chung), 'Gendered violence and citizenship: the complex effects of intimate partner violence on mental health, housing and employment', ARC Discovery Project
- Dr Irene Watson, 'Indigenous knowledge, law, society and the state', ARC Discovery Indigenous project.
See our research projects page.