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Current research projects

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Accounting for sustainability: developing an integrated approach for sustainability

This project will develop a framework and software system for evaluating and applying indicators in common planning and reporting situations. It seeks to address shortcomings in other indicators for monitoring and measuring sustainability, which often become detached from the practical tasks at hand managing businesses, preserving the environment, or promoting social and cultural wellbeing. The project will benefit Australian organisations by a) developing clear, practical sustainability goals; b) lowering cost of reporting compliance; and c) improving sustainability practices.

Project team: Paul James; Lin Padgham; James Thom; Hepu Deng; Andy Scerri, Liam Magee, Bill Cope and M. Holden.

Sponsors: Australian Research Council, Fuji Xerox, Microsoft, City of Melbourne and others.

Concern Worldwide: Vectors on New Technologies

The aim of this project is to develop an understanding of how and why rural communities in Timor-Leste adopt new technologies promoted through Concern’s livelihood and food security programs.

Project team: Damian Grenfell and Mayra Walsh

Sponsor: Concern Worldwide

Globalizing Indigeneity: Indigenous Cultural Festivals and Wellbeing in Australia and the Asia-Pacific

This project investigates the role of cultural festivals in supporting community wellbeing in selected Indigenous communities in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. The project argues that despite the very different penetration and impacts of globalization in these places, these festivals can be understood through a common framework which understands cultural expression as a domain which both deploys and exceeds rights based discourses as an assertion of Indigenous presence. It argues that festivals are a particularly effective forum for communities to assert and re-frame this presence, engage and educate other communities, institutions and levels of government on Indigenous terms, garner resources and strengthen the transmission of cultural knowledge across generations; all with varied wellbeing outcomes.

The research is grounded in fieldwork-based case studies of each festival. It examines the role festivals play in strengthening and promoting Indigenous cultural identity and belonging and how this contributes to wellbeing. It details the initiatives that grow from festivals and analyzes the extent to which they enrich social connection and community capacity.

Project Team: Peter Phipps, Paul James, Manfred Steger, Lisa Slater and Bo Svoronos

Sponsor: Australian Research Council and Telstra Foundation

Impacts of National NGO Gender Projects in Local Communities in Timor-Leste

This project involves RMIT University's Timor-Leste Research Program working with four East Timorese NGO partners (listed above) in order to collaboratively research and evaluate the impacts of the NGOs' gender-focused projects in local communities. Two staff from each organisation participate as co-researchers. Each NGO has selected one project to evaluate and one locale in which to conduct fieldwork (sub-district Venilale, sub-district Ermera, sub-district Atauro and sub-district Manatuto).

The RMIT team is delivering comprehensive, ongoing training and accompanying the NGO staff throughout the entire process so as to develop capacity in gender-sensitive research and evaluation. The projects runs entirely in Tetun.

Project team: Anna Trembath, Carmenesa Moniz Noronha, Damian Grenfell and Mayra Walsh (RMIT University), Filomena Fuca (GFFTL), Aida Exposto and Ambrosio Dias Fernandes (FKSH), Elda Barros and Maria Fatima Pereira Guterres (Alola), Fransisca da Silva and Mario Duarte Soriano (Women's Justice Unit, JSMP)

Sponsors: Irish Aid and Trocaire, Timor-Leste

Irregular Migrants and Political Belonging in Global Cities

This project investigates impacts of irregular migration in three cities in the Asia Pacific region. As Australia's role in security and development in Pacific states increases, there is every possibility that irregular labour migration may flow from these ties. This is likely to exacerbate tensions in Australia around multiculturalism and national identity that have surfaced recently in violent public disturbances and in debates on border protection, migration and guest worker schemes. This project will draw on regional and Australian experiences of irregular migration to inform policy and political questions on these prominent issues of citizenship, migration and globalisation.

Project team: Paul James and Anne McNevin

Sponsor: Australian Research Council

Mapping Justice Globalism: Reassessing the Ideological Landscape of the Twenty First Century

This project offers the first comprehensive analysis of the ideological claims of the global justice movement. The project assesses problem solving approaches and policy platforms of civil society groups within the global justice movement and implications for Australian policy development and practice. The project offers alternative strategies to anticipate and address problems of globalization, such as climate change, financial volatility, migratory pressures and cultural conflict. Key findings will be made available to Australia's policy making sector in targeted and accessible formats. The project will enhance Australia's capacity to interpret and engage with the forces of globalization shaping our region and the world.

Project team: Manfred Steger, Heikki Patomaki and Erin Wilson

Sponsor: Australian Research Council

Rebuilding Sustainable Communities: Assessing Post-Tsunami Resettlement Projects in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India

Through a comparative study of five post-tsunami resettlement projects (RPs) in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India, this practice-oriented research project will inform strategies for rebuilding of sustainable communities in regions affected by the 2004 tsunami. It is the the longest and most intense study of social recovery from the tsunami, and had involved RMIT and Monash University researchers in partnership with AusAID, Australia’s official aid agency. The focus has been on three themes: political and institutional factors affecting RP design and delivery; the rebuilding of economic self-reliance; and to distil a set of ‘best practices’ for use by AusAID and policy-makers in the ongoing rehabilitation of tsunami-affected communities and in the design of future post-disaster interventions in developing countries, as well as the creation of stable and effective social institutions in resettled communities.

Research team: Martin Mulligan, Yaso Nadarajah, Dave Mercer and Wasana Weeraratne (RMIT University), Judith Shaw (Monash University), and Matthew Clarke (Deakin University), with Professor Sri Hettige (University of Colombo), Kaleel Aqeel (South Eastern University, Pottuvil), Ashraff Ahmed (NESDO NGO, Sainthamaruthu) and Kushil Gunasegara (Foundation of Goodness, Seenigama)

Sponsor: Australian Research Council

Telling the Story of Melbourne’s Cultural Precincts

This consultancy, undertaken in association with the Melbourne-based Reputation Group, will advise the City of Melbourne on ways to capture and communicate the history and ‘stories’ associated with the city’s three major ‘cultural precincts’—the Lygon Street precinct, the Lonsdale Street ‘Greek precinct’ and Chinatown. In 2009 researchers worked with renowned Melbourne writer Arnold Zable to undertake research on the history of the three precincts and to capture a host of stories which could be used to communicate the history and character of the three areas to a broad public audience. The research has also involved a review of international literature and experience in regard to ‘cultural’ or ‘ethnic’ precincts and a paper on this was delivered to both the City of Melbourne and the Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC).

Project team: Martin Mulligan, Peter Phipps, and Aramiha Harwood

Sponsor: City of Melbourne