HSI Research Projects
Review of Capital of Power (RECASP)
The open-source, peer reviewed journal, the Review of Capital as Power (RECASP) is run by Politics and International Studies at UOW and is edited by Associate Professor Tim Di Muzio. The purpose of RECASP is to critically theorize, historicize and empirically research capital as power and capitalism as a conflictual mode of power. The area of inquiry is wide open, and we welcome big-picture contributions as well more focused research. Broader studies may seek to address questions such as the following:
- How does power bear on accumulation, and how does it get capitalized?
- What are the historical roots of capital as power, and how do these roots alter the way we understand the origins of capitalism?
- What are the ideological and theoretical underpinnings of the capitalist mode of power?
- How has capitalization evolved and mutated?
- What are the qualitative forms of power in capitalism, and how do they compare to those that characterized earlier modes of power?
- How does capitalism convert qualities into quantities?
- What are the limits of capitalized power?
- How is capitalized power resisted and opposed, and can it be reformed or overthrown?
- Can these questions be addressed by mainstream and heterodox theories of capitalism – and if so, how do their answers differ from those offered by the theory of capital as power?
Australian Research Council (ARC) projects
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | Completed
2018
Associate Professor Julia Martinez; Dr Claire Lowrie; Emeritus Professor Gregor Benton
“Chinese indentured labour in the colonial Asia Pacific region, 1919–1966”
Total $171,456
Primary FOR – 2103
This project aims to investigate the abolition of Chinese indenture in the Asia Pacific region after 1919. It intends to investigate whether labour standards set by the International Labor Organization (ILO) were able to influence and overcome the European colonial preference for coerced migrant labour. The project expects to generate new knowledge about Australian, Chinese and global attitudes towards labour migration, by combining a comparative regional approach with detailed case studies of Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
2017
Discovery Project
Professor Daniel Hutto; Dr Michael Kirchhoff; Professor Jesús Ilundain-Agurruza; Professor Shaun Gallagher
“Minds in skilled performance: Explanatory framework and comparative study”
Total $263,000
Primary FOR – 2203
This project aims to develop an explanatory framework to characterise states of mind necessary for skilled performance, and show how intelligence and emotion affect performance. The theoretical grounding of skilled performance is controversial. This project will use and refine core ideas from enactivist approaches to embodied cognition to address philosophical challenges that block understanding of its basis. The project will draw on Phenomenology, Pragmatism and Japanese "do", clarifying and recontextualising what they have to offer to contemporary thinking about skilled performance.
Linkage Project
Professor Simon Ville with Dr Jude Philp; Associate Professor Anne Clarke; Dr Robin Torrence; Professor Deirdre Coleman; Dr Elizabeth Carter; Ms Vanessa Finney
* Note Project is hosted at The University of Sydney
“Reconstructing museum specimen data through the pathways of global commerce”
Total $403,060
Primary FOR – 2102
This project aims to reconnect zoological specimens with vital collection data. From 1758-1900 millions of specimens were commercially traded to and between museums and collectors, frequently without retaining the data associated with the specimen. This project pioneers spectroscopic techniques to reconstruct data and enhance material conservation practice. The impact of the project will provide new pathways for recovering lost ecological data, creating a resource to improve future biodiversity research.
2016
Discovery Indigenous
Associate Professor Bronwyn Carlson
"Aboriginal Help-Seeking Behaviours on Social Media"
Total $382,929
Primary FOR - 1699
This project is designed to contribute to knowledge of formal and informal help-seeking behaviours among Indigenous Australians. Given the rapid uptake of social media by Indigenous people, this project particularly aims to investigate help-seeking behaviours online. It is anticipated that the outcome of this research may influence the development of formal help sources in the services and programs relevant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including health (eg suicide prevention), employment, housing, economic opportunities and legal services. Another intended outcome of the project is to better understand informal help-seeking and the way in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people respond to help.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA)
Dr Katherine Bagnall
"Chinese seeking citizenship in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, 1860-1920"
Total $357,793
Primary FOR - 2103
This project plans to study the paths to citizenship for Chinese settlers in late 19th- and early 20th-century Australia, in comparison with New Zealand and Canada. From the mid-19th century, Chinese migrants to Australia sought to become citizens in their adopted homeland. The project intends to analyse naturalisation law and policy and use biographies and case studies to consider why and how Chinese became British subjects. The project expects to deepen historical understandings of the settlement of Chinese migrants by documenting their struggles for citizenship and rights. By exploring historical case studies it also aims to highlight the socio-economic benefits of naturalisation for the migrant and the nation.
2015
Discovery Project
Professor Vera Mackie; Associate Professor Sarah Ferber; Dr Nicola Marks
"IVF and Assisted Reproductive Technologies: The Global Experience"
Total $518,953
The 40th anniversary of the birth of the first baby conceived through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) will occur in 2018. This project aims to produce a history of IVF and the range of assisted reproductive technologies with which it is associated. These new forms of conception, gestation and parenting have transformed understandings of the family and have led to regulatory and policy responses and public debate, which can only be understood in a global frame. A series of transnational case studies, with a special focus on the Asia-Pacific region, will be designed to explore the development of the present consumer, medical and regulatory environments and provide a historically informed basis for dealing with policy deliberations locally and internationally.
Linkage Project
Professor Vera Mackie, with Diane Kirkby, Tanya Fitzgerald and Tangerine Holt
“Fostering Women's Leadership through Educational Exchange, 1930–1980”
Total $224,325
This project plans to explore what makes it possible for women to exercise leadership. This project is a transnational study of women from Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the Philippines who participated in educational exchange programs with the United States in the mid-20th century. The project asks how these cross-cultural encounters and international networks facilitated and transformed the practices of leadership in the United States, Asia and the Pacific. The project, in partnership with the Australian-American Fulbright Commission, aims to provide a historical perspective on leadership which can inform contemporary debates on the conditions for fostering women as leaders.