Completed funded research projects

Funding Source: ARC Discovery Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Suellen Murray

In this project, Suellen Murray and Anastasia Powell will be investigating the development and impact of domestic violence policy in Australia over the past twenty years. Through a combination of textual analysis and interviews with key policy makers, the research will document the history of public policy responses to domestic violence in Australia and analyse the range of approaches and their implications over this time. The identification of domestic violence as a policy problem was at least partly a response to feminist activism and the project will consider how public policy has made sense of these feminist interventions.

Funding Source: ARC Discovery Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Kim Humphery, Ferne Edwards, Andy Scerri, Kelly Donati

This project is an investigation of contemporary critiques of Western consumption emanating from within Western societies themselves. Divided into three interconnecting research themes and stages, the project involves a selective review and analysis of recent media and public intellectual commentary in the West on the consequences of consumption, a brief documentation and critical discussion of recent ‘anti-consumption’ activism in Europe, North America and Australasia, and a detailed, Australian-based ethnographic exploration of how people think about and negotiate material cultures and the contemporary ethos of materialism.

Visit the Anti-Consumerism in the Contemporary West project website

Funding Source: ARC Discovery Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Jock McCulloch

This is the first world history of the asbestos industry and its social impact. It investigates key aspects of the mineral’s life story in regard to mining, manufacture, medical discovery, labour, social movements, the law and the state. The project is theoretically innovative in linking the distinct bodies of knowledge that flow from each of those sites. It also raises significant questions that cannot be answered within separate disciplines. The resulting book and articles will provide practical tools for those seeking improved working conditions and assist those seeking legal redress for asbestos related disease.

Funding Source: ARC Discovery Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Iain Campbell, Jenny Chalmers and Robyn May

This study aims to describe and explain the barriers and channels to effective representation of casual workers in Australian unions, using analysis of ABS data, a survey of casual workers, semi-structured interviews with union officials, and case-studies of union campaigns. The study offers an innovative multi-disciplinary framework for analysis of two of the most significant and interlocking trends affecting Australian workplaces: the growth of casual work and the decline of union influence. Outcomes will include published contributions to the international academic literature on labour restructuring and union renewal and a policy-orientated discussion paper for an Australian audience.

Funding Source: ARC Linkage Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Tony Dalton, Rob Watts

This research examines the everyday practice of public housing officers working in the Victorian Office of Housing. It aims to analyse the ways that workers exercise discretion, and the patterns of meanings that they construct, through their interactions with clients, departmental managers and other human service providers. It is the first ethnographic study of front-line work in housing services in Australia and builds on comparable work done in the United Kingdom and America. The knowledge generated will inform innovation in public housing services, housing policy debates and emerging programs designed to integrate housing with other human services.

Funding Source: ARC Discovery Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Sara Charlesworth

Supporting the health and well-being of parents and young children is a national research and policy priority, as is the need to promote better work and family balance. The project examines how the quality of parents’ jobs influences parent, family and children’s well-being. The research uses nationally representative data from two Waves of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (Growing Up in Australia), a unique study of families with young children. The project addresses key components of Australia’s Second National Mental Health Plan, and policies targeting a healthy start to life, supplying evidence for the development of family, employment and social policy that promotes and protects the well-being of Australian families.

Funding Source: ARC Linkage Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Judith Shawand, Robyn Eversole

This study recognises the high and growing significance of overseas migrant remittances as contributors to GDP and household livelihoods in many countries. It responds to current policy interest in remittances as a development resource, as well as security concerns related to informal funds transfers. This groundbreaking study will work with microfinance providers in six Asia-Pacific countries (Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Samoa, Fiji and Tonga) to investigate the impacts of remittance-linked financial services on household well-being and economic development. The study will identify how existing and new services can best promote development and poverty reduction in migrant-sending areas.

Funding Source: ARC Linkage Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Suellen Murray, John Murphy

Industry Partner: MacKillop Family Services

This project, developed in close collaboration with the Industry Partner, MacKillop Family Services, will examine the impact of having been in out-of-home care for the subsequent identities and life histories of successive generations of care leavers. While focused on Catholic institutions in Victoria, it will provide more general insights into the role of the church-based children’s homes. Based on archival and oral history methods, it will also be an opportunity for those who experienced care to tell the story of life after leaving care.

Funding Source: ARC Linkage Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Iain Campbell, Barbara Pocock, John Buchanan, Susan Oakley, Ian Watson, Robyn May

Industry Partners: Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, Labor Council of NSW, Brotherhood of St Lawrence, United Trades and Labour Council of SA, Victoria Trades Hall Council

This project brings together academic researchers, with those who assist and advocate for the low paid in both the union and welfare sectors, to develop understanding about low paid services sector work in Australia. The project goes beyond existing theoretical and empirical work by examining intersecting wage and welfare system effects, through a gendered, spatial, longitudinal, and household analysis. The project will examine the dynamic interactions of the labour market, welfare system, community and family structures, in representative household types, analysing relationships between low pay and social exclusion in the growing services sector, and evaluating policy responses.

Funding Source: ARC Linkage Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Sara Charlesworth, Iain Campbell, Kerri Whittenbury

Industry Partner: Victoria Police

Research suggests that a major barrier to retaining women both in sworn and unsworn positions in police work is the limited provision and uptake of part-time work. A related impediment is the conditions associated with the part-time work available in policing services. This project uses an action research approach to analyse the constraints on and options for ensuring that part-time work within Victoria Police is good ‘quality’ work. The project outcomes will contribute to better theoretical and organisational understandings of the dimensions of quality in the implementation of part-time work in public policing and in other organisational contexts.

Funding Source: ARC Discovery Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Iain Campbell, Belinda Probert, Jenny Chalmers

Part-time employment is an important and growing phenomenon in Australia, as is most OECD countries. While research has focused on the quantity of part-time employment, the key dimension of quality has been neglected. This project will develop a sophisticated conceptual framework for assessing the quality of part-time employment, drawing on cross-national comparisons and using a gender systems approach. It will produce a comprehensive and practical assessment of the quality of part-time employment in Australia, including two detailed industry case studies. Finally, the project will evaluate the main policy paths for improving the quality of part-time employment.

Funding Source: ARC Discovery Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Sara Charlesworth

In analysing the persistence of women’s disadvantage in the workplace, research has focused on the inadequacy of anti-discrimination law and both government and corporate EEO policies. Less attention has been paid to the myriad ways in which these proscriptions of discrimination are understood and implemented in the workplace. This project will examine workplace discourses around sex discrimination in a range of industry case studies. It will contribute to a better theoretical understanding of the ways in which women’s workplace disadvantage is constructed and negotiated within specific organisational contexts and cultures and also provide practical guidance for human rights agencies.

Funding Source: ARC Linkage Grant

Key RMIT Researchers: Sara Charlesworth, Marian Baird, Sheree Cartwright

Industry Partners: Holden Ltd and Sydney Water Corporation

This project addresses the important and urgent need to reconcile organisational efficiency with employee needs to balance work, personal and family life. Current research indicates that the adoption of standard ‘family-friendly’ policies is hindered by traditional, gendered work processes, organisational norms and structures. A new approach called the ‘dual agenda’ for change is advocated to resolve this problem. This project tests the application of the ‘dual agenda’ in two large Australian organisations. The data produced will identify policies and processes which meet the ‘dual agenda’ of gender equitable, improved work-life outcomes for employees and improved business outcomes for organisations.

Funding Source: Office of Workplace Rights Advocate

Key RMIT Researchers: Sara Charlesworth, Fiona MacDonald

Funded by the Victorian Office of the Workplace Rights Advocate, the project aims to identify the nature of the difficulties currently experienced by Victorian women workers before, during and after taking maternity leave and the impact, if any, that the recent changes in industrial regulation may have had on pregnancy-related discrimination.

Download the full details of the project (PDF 140p 599kb)

Funding Source: Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission

Key RMIT Researchers: Sara Charlesworth

The project sought to identify factors influencing the resolution of complaints lodged at the Commission under the Equal Opportunity Act 1995 (the EO Act). The files examined included both successfully and unsuccessfully conciliated complaints.

Funding Source: State Governments of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia, the National Foundation for Australian Women, Women’s Electoral Lobby, the Don Chipp Foundation, the Young Women’s Christian Association, Women with Disabilities Australian and Victorian Women Lawyers

Key RMIT Researchers: Sara Charlesworth, Fiona MacDonald

The main aim of the project is to undertake a national qualitative assessment of the effects of changes in work regulation brought about by the WorkChoices Act, 2006 (Cth) on specific groups of vulnerable workers, including the low paid, women, young people, workers with disabilities and workers of non-English speaking background. The 135 planned interviews (30 in Victoria) will be placed in the context of a quantitative ‘stocktake’ study of current data collections that has just been completed by Curtin University of Technology. This combined assessment aims to inform public debate on the effects of ‘WorkChoices’ and to assist State Governments to understand the implications for state service provision to vulnerable groups of workers, as well as respond in policy terms.

Funding Source: ARC Linkage Grant

Key RMIT Researchers:Pavla Miller, Judith Smart

With its centenary approaching, the school wants to evaluate its past. In cooperation with RMIT, the writing of a school history can produce three important outcomes. As historian in residence, the doctoral scholar can provide focus for self reflection by the school community. As social history, the work can fill a significant gap in the understanding of publicly funded education in Australia. As contribution to policy, it can address two continuing debates: about the place of selective state schools in a national system of education, and about the dynamics of single sex schools, and the education of girls more generally.