Current Projects

Australian Research Council

ARC Laureate Fellowship

How gender shapes the world: a linguistic perspective

Indicative funding: $2,416,141

This project will seek to understand and explain gender roles in Australian society, and in nearby nations. Emphasis is placed on training researchers with an immigrant or minority background, working towards the empowerment of women researchers. This will enhance our nation's capacity to interpret and manage gender roles in multicultural contexts.

Chief Investigator: Alexandra Aikhenvald

Collaborating School/Institution: The Cairns Institute; School of Arts & Social Sciences

ARC Discovery Project (DP0877331)

The prison project: Penal culture and the reinvention of the prison in Australia

Indicative funding: $510,553

Imprisonment rates have grown dramatically across all Australian jurisdictions over the last 20 years, although the growth has been somewhat uneven between States and Territories. The purpose of the prison project is to examine and explain these developments through an analysis of changes in penal culture. In particular the research will address the question of how the prison has re-emerged from the 1980s to the present as a major feature of contemporary criminal justice policy. The project uses an innovative multidisciplinary approach combining law, criminology, penology and has the potential to provide significant new information for use by policy makers.

Chief Investigators: Chris Cunneen, David Brown, Mark Brown, Eileen Baldry, Alex Steel

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; School of Law; University of New South Wales; University of Melbourne

ARC Linkage Project (LP100200455)

National research study of the civil and family law needs of indigenous people

Indicative funding: $466,157 + $120,000 industry contribution

This project aims to identify and analyse the civil and family law needs of Indigenous Australians, in areas such as discrimination, consumer matters, credit and debt, child protection, education, employment, health, housing and wills and estates. The research will be based on focus groups in 32 Indigenous communities across Australia. It will be the first comprehensive analysis of Indigenous civil and family law needs ever undertaken in Australia and will identify priority areas of legal need. The research will inform successful models of legal service delivery. Improved responses will deliver better access to justice, enhanced compliance with human rights norms and improved social justice outcomes for Indigenous people. See project website for further details.

Chief Investigators: Chris Cunneen, Melanie Schwartz, Larissa Behrendt, Fiona Allison, Nadia David, Jason de Santolo

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; School of Law; University of New South Wales; University of Technology Sydney; Victoria Legal Aid; Northern Territory Legal Aid Commission; Legal Aid Queensland; Legal Aid Commission of Western Australia; Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service Co-operative Limited; North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency Limited; North Australian Aboriginal Family Violence Legal Service; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service (QLD) Limited; Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia Inc.; Central Australian Aboriginal Family Law Unit

ARC Discovery Indigenous (IN130100023)

Inspiring Indigenous youth to build resilience and sustain participation with education and employment: The role of targeted mentoring support

Indicative funding: $515,000

This project will develop a model illustrating the attributes and effectiveness of a mentoring program to enhance resilience, and education and employment prospects for Indigenous youth will be developed. The model will inform practice and contribute policy-relevant knowledge toward Government targets of improving Year 12 attainment rates and employment outcomes.

Chief Investigators: Roxanne Bainbridge, Komla Tsey, Adrian Miller, Christopher M Doran, Anthony Shakeshaft, Roz D Walker

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; School of Education; Southern Cross University; University of New South Wales; University of Newcastle; Telethon Institute for Child Health Research; The University of Western Australia

ARC Discovery Project (DP0878622)

The world through the prism of language: A cross-linguistic view of genders, noun classes, and classifiers

Indicative funding: $505,000

Australia is one of the most multilingual and multicultural countries in the world, with several hundred indigenous and immigrant languages. Noun classification devices ranging from gender systems in familiar Indo-European languages to numeral classifiers in Southeast Asian languages offer a unique insight into people's categorisation of the world around them. In-depth knowledge of how speakers of different languages classify objects around them will promote intercultural understanding within Australia and world wide, allowing us to overcome potential miscommunications due to different language backgrounds, and advancing our understanding of the region and the world (within the National Priority 'Safeguarding Australia').

The project will produce grammars of previously undescribed languages, and will advance our understanding of the ways in which languages reflect the world around.

Chief Investigators: Alexandra Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon

Dr. Mark Post was PostDoctoral Research Fellow employed on this grant, working on 'Classifiers in Minyong, a Tibeto-Burman language'. Dr Tianqiao (Mike) Lu was also employed on this project, working on 'Classifiers in Kam-Tai languages'. Sihong Zhang, a PhD scholar, receives support from this grant.

Collaborating School/Institutions: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute; Association of the Tariana of the Upper Rio Negro; University of Cologne; University of Leiden

Associated with ARC DP 'The world through the prism of language'

Languages of the Amazon

This is state-of-the art account of linguistic diversity in Amazonia. The monograph and the project will provide an exhaustive perspective on Amazonian languages, their profiles and histories.

Chief Investigator: Alexandra Aikhenvald

Collaborating School: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

ARC Discovery Project (DP130100184)

A comparative analysis of youth punishment in Australia and the United Kingdom

Indicative funding: $429,000

This project is a comparative Australian and United Kingdom investigation of penal policy and the punishment of juvenile offenders. The research analyses the changing approaches to juvenile incarceration, particularly in the context of perceived effects on crime and the substantial public and social costs of incarceration.

Principal Investigators: Chris Cunneen, Eileen Baldry, Melanie Schwartz, Barry C Goldson, David B Brown

Collaborating School/Institution: The Cairns Institute; School of Law; University of New South Wales; University of Liverpool, UK

ARC Discovery Project (DP0770115)

Are some languages better than others?

Indicative funding: $374,868

It is important for the Australian community speaking several hundred different indigenous and immigrant languages across the nation to realise that each language has approximately (but not precisely) the same overall complexity as every other. One may have intricate word structure, while another has short words but elaborate rules for putting words together to make sentences. And, striding above 'political correctness', many people in Australia will be interested to know whether a certain language is a little more efficient than certain other languages for a particular purpose (for example, commercial business).

Chief Investigators: R. M. W. Dixon, Alexandra Aikhenvald

Dr Anne Schwarz is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow employed on this grant, working on 'A grammar of Secoya, a Western Tucanoan language'. PhD scholars Chia-jung Pan, Dineke Schokkin and Yankee Modi receive support from this grant.

Collaborating School/Institutions: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute; University of Cologne; University of Leiden

Associated with ARC DP 'Are some languages better than others?'

Imperatives and commands

The project investigates the ways in which languages of the world frame commands as a speech act. The project will provide a cross-linguistically based understanding of the notion of command and its use across the world.

Chief Investigator: Alexandra Aikhenvald

Collaborating School: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

ARC Discovery Project (DP130101361)

How languages differ and why

Indicative funding: $350,000

When languages interact, they become similar in certain ways. This project will explore the reasons for this, by examining why there are many languages of diverse structures in certain regions, focussing on New Guinea, Amazonia and north-east Queensland. The project will assist with understanding how language helps and hinders inter-ethnic communication.

Chief Investigators: Alexandra Aikhenvald, R.M.W. Dixon, Lourens de Vries, Willem F Adelaar

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute; Free University of Amsterdam; University of Leiden

ARC Discovery Project (DP110102291)

Objects of possession: Artefact transactions in the Wet Tropics of North Queensland, 1870-2013

Indicative funding $350,000

The project’s research into artifact collecting will provide Indigenous peoples, museum curators and other community members with important insights into the history of Indigenous cultures in the Wet Tropics region. Our project will contribute to the development of innovative ways of presenting Indigenous peoples’ connections with their cultural heritage.

Chief Investigators: Rosita Henry, Russell E McGregor, Michael A Wood, Shelley M Greer, Ton Otto
Collaborating School: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

ARC Discovery project (DP110103207)

The grammar of knowledge: A cross-linguistic view of evidential and epistemological expressions

Indicative funding: $335,686

How does a speaker know that what they say is correct? Some languages have obligatory marking for stating ‘information source’ (‘seen’, ‘inferred’, or ‘reported’). In others a source is optional – ‘the (reported) theft’. This cross-linguistic investigation will advance our understanding of human interaction and the expression of knowledge.

Chief Investigators: Alexandra Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon, Anne Storch, Gerrit J Dimmendaal

Collaborating Schools/Organisations: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute; Universität zu Köln

ARC Linkage Project (LP110100658)

Land, language and heritage

Indicative funding; $304,724

Building on academic work by RMW Dixon and educational initiatives by Ernie Grant, this large- scale cooperative initiative will produce comprehensive documentation of the Jirrbal Aboriginal tribe from North Queensland, in written, audiovisual and web-based form. It embraces traditional culture, recent history and language adaptation, enhancing the work of Partner Organisation, Echo Creek Cultural Centre, in the cross-cultural training it provides. The project is cast within the framework of the Holistic Approach (linking land, language and heritage), integrating and promoting indigenous knowledge. We work towards the empowerment of Indigenous Australians, reaffirmation of their identity and sustainable use of traditional environment.

Chief Investigators: R. M. W. Dixon, Alexandra Aikhenvald

Collaborating School/Organisation: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute; Echo Adventure and Cultural Camp

ARC Discovery Project (DP130101121)

Justice reinvestment in Australia: Conceptual foundations for criminal justice innovation

Indicative funding: $235,000

This project will examine the characteristics of Justice Reinvestment programs used in other countries which reduce spending on prisons and reinvest the savings in high crime communities to reduce crime and build community services. This study will analyse whether such programs can be developed in the Australian context.

Chief Investigators: Julie Stubbs, Melanie Schwartz, Chris Cunneen, David Brown

Collaborating School/Institution: School of Law; The Cairns Institute; University of New South Wales (Administering Organisation)

ARC Discovery Project (DI110100011)

A whole-of-community approach to promoting engagement into education in a discrete indigenous community: A mixed method study

Indicative funding: $206,453

This research will develop a whole-of-community approach to engage Indigenous learners with education and provide evidence of a model that works. Developed in one community, the model will contribute policy-relevant knowledge for improving Indigenous educational outcomes and meeting the Commonwealth Government’s Closing the Gap targets.

Chief Investigators: Roxanne Bainbridge, Komla Tsey, Pauline Taylor, Melissa Vick

Collaborating School: The Cairns Institute; School of Education

ARC Linkage Project (LP100100424)

Assessing the effectiveness of a community reinforcement and family training intervention for alcohol misuse with Indigenous Australians

Indicative funding: $80,000

A national benefit will be the contribution of evidence about the feasibility, utility and potential effectiveness of individual and family-based interventions for reducing alcohol-related harms and improving family functioning among Indigenous Australians. Community level benefits will include, firstly, the strengthened role and capability of participating health services and staff to utilise evidence based approaches to support Indigenous individuals and families dealing with alcohol problems. Secondly, Indigenous individuals and families participating in the Community Reinforcement and Family-based Training intervention will acquire the requisite skills and knowledge to manage the alcohol problems affecting them.

Chief Investigators: Anton C Clifford, Anthony Shakeshaft, Julaine M Allan, Christopher M Doran, Komla Tsey, Andrew R MacQueen

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales; The Lyndon Community; School of Education; The Cairns Institute; Yoorana Gunya Family Violence Healing Centre Aboriginal Corporation

ARC Linkage Project (LP0882860)

Constructing regionally appropriate anti-racism strategies for Australia

Indicative funding: $7,240

Racism is an international social scourge, and Australia is not immune from its injurious effects. The experience of racism degrades senses of belonging and generates disaffection, leads to ill health and restrictions of mobility, as well as other social and individual pathologies. Reducing racism will strengthen Australia's social fabric. This project tests the utility of anti racism templates and does so in rural as well as urban Australia. The templates will be usable by local authorities and NGOs in framing their anti racism efforts.

Chief Investigators: Kevin Dunn, Anne Pedersen, Jim Forrest, Yin Paradies, David Ip, Hurriyet Babacan

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School Social Sciences, University of Western Sydney; School of Psychology, Murdoch; Human Geography, Macquarie University; Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health; University of Queensland; Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission of Australian; Equal Opportunity Commission of South Australia; Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

The Ndu languages of New Guinea

The project investigates the structure and the spread of the Ndu languages of the East Sepik, PNG, the biggest language family in the Sepik area.

The project will result in a number of grammars of Ndu languages, and an account of their migrations and history.

Chief Investigator: Alexandra Aikhenvald

Collaborating School: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

The Tariana language revival (Amazonas, Brazil)

This is an on-going project focussing on description and maintenance of the Tariana language, the major Arawak language in the multilingual Vaupés area of Amazonia

The project provides continuous benefit to the community by producing grammatical studies, pedagogical materials, dictionaries and support for language maintenance and revival.

Chief Investigator: Alexandra Aikhenvald

Collaborating School/Institution: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute; The Association of the Tariana of the Upper Rio Negro

National Health & Medical Research Council

NHMRC Capacity Building Grant (456402)

Building a cohort of indigenous research leaders in community health development

Indicative funding: $2,376,107

The project brings together a team of experienced health researchers supporting six indigenous health scholars to complete PhDs in areas of strategic importance for Indigenous health at the community level. Training received by the PhD students will provide them with the skills to address some of the most pressing Indigenous health issues and equip them to lead the next generation of health research and policy development.

Chief Investigators: R McDermott, A Esterman, J Buckly, P d’Abbs, Komla Tsey, L Segal; Team Investigators: D Young, S Campbell, S Champion, T Esgin, A Chong, T Agius, M Daniel

Collaborating School/Institution: School of Education; University of South Australia; Menzies School of Health Research; The Cairns Institute

NHMRC Capacity Building Grant (431504)

Building research capacity in Indigenous Australians and community controlled services

Indicative funding: $2,289,759

This project has three objectives: 1) to build the research capacity of a cohort of 13 Indigenous researchers based in Northern Australia and Victoria; 2) to establish a network to promote Indigenous health research and build capacity in three Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services already involved in Indigenous and population health research and in employees within those three Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services; and 3) to investigate and analyse models of how Universities can best build research capacity in Indigenous population health researchers.

Chief Investigators: Rick Speare, Komla Tsey, Jacinta Elston, Craig Veitch, Richard Murray

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine & Rehabilitation Sciences; School of Education; The Cairns Institute; Indigenous Health Unit; Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine; School of Medicine & Dentistry

NHMRC (601025)

Pandemic influenza containment strategies in Aboriginal communities: What is acceptable and feasible?

Indicative funding: $1,027,500

This research project is about finding ways to control and contain the flu in Aboriginal communities. We believe that the current national containment strategies for pandemic influenza will be unsuitable for Aboriginal communities owing to social and cultural differences. Our aims are to work with Aboriginal communities to:

find out why it would be difficult to put into practice parts of the National Action Plan to control and contain the flu in rural and remote Aboriginal communities in NSW, Qld and WA;
develop culturally appropriate strategies for these communities;
develop a common strategy and a toolkit that can be changed and used by other communities to their needs.

Chief Investigators: Richard Speare, Adrian Miller, David Durrheim, Sherry Saggers, Komla Tsey, Carmel Nelson, Jenni Judd

Collaborating Schools: School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine & Rehabilitation Sciences; School of Education; The Cairns Institute

NHMRC (490302)

A structured systems approach for improving health promotion practice for chronic diseases in indigenous communities

Indicative funding: $848,468

By building on the success of the recently established process for improving systems of clinical care (the ABCD project), this research has the potential to improve the effectiveness of health promotion in Indigenous communities. This project will also make important contributions to the health promotion field where there is little documented evidence on the use and effectiveness of modern quality approaches. Furthermore, it addresses an area of research which has not been investigated extensively in Australia, and particularly in Indigenous settings.

Chief Investigators: Ross Bailie, Nikki Clelland, Komla Tsey, Beverly Sibthorpe

Collaborating School/Institutions: School of Education; Northern Territory Department of Health and Community Services (NTDHCS); Menzies School of Health Research (MSHR); CRC for Aboriginal Health (CRCAH); The Cairns Institute

NHMRC (1048069)

Intervention trial to reduce alcohol related harms among high risk young Indigenous Australians

Indicative funding: $379,931

Indigenous Australians experience disproportionately high rates of drug and alcohol harms and young people are particularly vulnerable.This study will investigate the benefits/costs of combining cognitive-behaviour therapy with a community-reinforcement strategy to reduce substance-related harms among young Indigenous Australians.

Chief Investigators: Anthony Shakeshaft, Anton Clifford, Komla Tsey, Christopher Doran, Melissa Haswell-Elkins

Collaborating School/Institutions: University of New South Wales; University of Queensland; The Cairns Institute

NHMRC (630643)

The feasibility and effectiveness of a family-based intervention for Indigenous Australians with alcohol dependence

Indicative funding: $212,500

This study aims to determine the feasibility of implementing a family-based intervention in an Indigenous community-controlled health service in rural NSW and its level of acceptability to Indigenous patients. The expected main benefits of implementing the family-based intervention are increases in the percentage of Indigenous individuals with alcohol dependence entering and engaging in evidence-based treatment.

Chief Investigators: Anthony Shakeshaft, Komla Tsey, Anton Clifford, Miranda Rose, Julaine Allan

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; The Cairns Institute; University of New South Wales

NHMRC (630441)

Economic evaluation of interventions to reduce the burden of harm from alcohol misuse in Indigenous Australians

Indicative funding: $194,416

The aim of this proposal is to conduct an economic evaluation of interventions to reduce the burden of harm associated with alcohol misuse in Indigenous Australians.

The specific objectives of the research are to:

Assess the relative cost-effectiveness of a comprehensive set of interventions for alcohol misuse in Indigenous Australians;
Recommend an optimal package of cost-effective interventions to address alcohol misuse in Indigenous Australians, within the constraints of current budgets, and for a series of alternative forms of budgetary provision;
Conduct a cost-benefit analysis that includes both health and non-health consequences of interventions to reduce the burden of harm from alcohol misuse;
Strengthen the use of evidence in Indigenous health priority setting in Australia; and,
Develop effective linkages between Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and policy makers.

Chief Investigators: Christopher Doran, Eric Vos, Yvonne Cadet-James, Anthony Shakeshaft, Komla Tsey, Melissa Haswell-Elkins

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Indigenous Australian Studies; School of Education; The Cairns Institute; University of Queensland; National Centre for Drug and Alcohol Research, University of New South Wales

NHMRC (601034)

Feasible containment strategies for swine influenza H1N1 in rural and remote indigenous communities

Indicative funding: $457,750

In June 2009 NH&MRC called for public health and medical research proposals that aimed to rapidly inform and advance Australian strategies to prevent, prepare for and respond to a potential H1N1 Influenza pandemic and inform the development of public policy.

Chief Investigators: Richard Speare, Adrian Miller, David Durrheim, Peter Massey, Carmel Nelson, Jenni Judd, Sherry Saggers, Komla Tsey, Alan Clough, Marlene Thompson

Collaborating Schools: School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine & Rehabilitation Sciences; School of Education; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

NHMRC - Career Development Award (351629)

Assessing the contribution of control and empowerment as tools for understanding and addressing the social determinants of health in Indigenous settings

Indicative funding: $428,625

Chief Investigator: Komla Tsey

Collaborating School: School of Education; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

NHMRC (431536)

Palliative care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with end-stage renal disease: An action research initiative

Indicative funding: $295,554

This study aims to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living with advanced kidney disease to make effective informed choices for palliative care. The care model will take account of their special cultural, spiritual and social needs, those of their family, carers, healthcare personnel and the wider community. Palliative care is broadly defined as: "an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual" World Health Organisation, 2003. The goals of palliative treatment are extremely concrete: relief from suffering, treatment of pain and other distressing symptoms, psychological and spiritual care, a support system to help the individual live as actively as possible, and a support system to sustain and rehabilitate the individual's family. While everyone is different and has different needs, key areas have been identified thus far in the analysis. A preliminary scanning of data shows very problem-saturated concerns around care for Kowanyama people living with end-stage renal disease.

Chief Investigators: Steve Margolis, Komla Tsey, Valmae Ypinazar, Yvonne Cadet-James, Sue McGinty

Collaborating Schools: School of Education; School of Medicine; School of Indigenous Australian Studies; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

Australian Governments: Commonwealth

Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities - Northern Australia Biodiversity Hub

Socio-economic systems and reef resilience

Indicative funding: $800,000 over 4 years

This project focuses on relationships between socio-economic systems and the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). It comprises three interrelated activities which seek to improve our understanding of (a) resident and tourist views about the relative 'value' of key ecosystem services that are provided by the reef; (b) tourist views about the relative value of key attributes of reef health, and the likely consequence (eg fewer visits, less expenditure) of deterioration in reef health; and (c) the extent to which variations in beef prices, the exchange rate and other socioeconomic variables (in conjunction with biophysical variables) influence water quality in the GBR lagoon.

Chief Investigators: Natalie Stoeckl, Jon Brodie, Silva Larson and Bruce Prideaux with the help of Taha Chaiechi, Renae Tobin, Stephen Lewis, Margaret Gooch, Bob Costanza and Ida Kubiszewski

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Business; The Cairns Institute; Australian Centre for Tropical Freshwater Research; Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation; Earth & Environmental Sciences and Portland State University

Department of Health & Ageing - Therapeutic Goods Administration

Learning from the experts: building bridges to implement successful life promotion and suicide prevention expertise across Aboriginal communities

Indicative funding: $654,905

Chief Investigators: Komla Tsey, Janya McCalman, Yvonne Cadet-James, Valda Wallace, Melissa Haswell-Elkins, Don Gorman, Diego de Leo, Mary Whiteside

A community based suicide prevention initiative in several Queensland Indigenous communities. The project used the knowledge and experience of the Indigenous community in Yarrabah as a model for other communities for the establishment of effective and sustainable community based approaches to build resilience, reduce suicide risk exposure and reduce self-harm. Through knowledge sharing, the skills, knowledge and experience of each community was strengthened.

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; School of Indigenous Australian Studies; University of New South Wales; University of Southern Queensland; Griffith University; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations

Northern Research Futures (NRF)

Indicative funding: $453,065

The project is part of an Australian Government grant to Charles Darwin University to support the development of their social and environmental research capacity it has two main objectives

A. First: that Charles Darwin University is nationally recognised as a critical node in social and environmental research for the remote tropical north, working as part of a critical mass of researchers with two of Australia’s most research-intensive universities (Australian National University and James Cook University), and a major research institution (Australian Institute of Marine Science); and

B. Second: to enable ongoing and sustainable programs of multi-disciplinary collaborative, world-class research that is sought out by both end users and next users for integration into policy and practice.

Chief Investigators: Hurriyet Babacan, Allan Dale

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; Charles Darwin University

Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities - Northern Australia Biodiversity Hub

Searching for cost-effective methods of achieving key biodiversity outcomes in Northern Australia: are there economies of scale or scope?

Indicative funding: $222,722

Working across Australia’s North, this project will investigate the financial aspects and relative cost-effectiveness of achieving specific biodiversity outcomes by collecting and analysing data on the costs of undertaking a range of activities that could achieve biodiversity objectives, on their own, and/or in conjunction with a range of other activities (such as those associated with tourism, agriculture, carbon and/or bio-security). This activity will thus identify cost-effective means of achieving particular biodiversity outcomes and assess the importance of economies of scale and/or of economies of scope.

Chief Investigators: Natalie Stoeckl, Sizhong Sun, Taha Chaiechi

Collaborating School: School of Business; The Cairns Institute

Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities: National Environmental Research Program (NERP)

Conservation planning for a changing coastal zone

Indicative funding: $207,860 over 4 years

The broad goal of this project is to identify strategic priorities for protection and restoration

of coastal ecosystems that support the health and resilience of the GBRWHA, in the context of changing land use, expanding infrastructure, and climate change. More specifically, the project will address three limitations of previous research and application in conservation planning. First, conservation planning has focused principally on snapshots of biodiversity and land uses, as if planning regions were static. Approaches to conservation planning are being developed to address natural and anthropogenic dynamics1, and these approaches will be adapted and extended by this project. Second, few exercises in conservation planning have attempted to address the physical and biological interactions between land and sea and the cross-realm impacts of human activities. This project will advance land-sea planning and guide planners and managers in resolving tradeoffs between conservation objectives for terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments. Third, the implementation of effective actions in priority areas identified by conservation planning has been hampered by complex, conflicting governance (especially in coastal zones), poor understanding of real-world opportunities for and constraints on management, and lack of engagement with stakeholders. This project will link cutting-edge methods for explicit conservation planning to analysis of governance, new spatial data on management.

Chief Investigators: Bob Pressey, Hugh Yorkston, Allan Dale, Jon Brodie

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: ARC CoE Coral Reef Studies; Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority; The Cairns Institute; Australian Centre for Tropical Freshwater Research

Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities Australian Marine Mammal Centre and National Environmental Research Program - Grant Schemes

The sharing of dugong and turtle meat by Torres Strait Islanders: Management strategies and options

Indicative funding: $170,468

The Torres Strait dugong and turtle fisheries are recognised by a Native Title determination an international treaty between Australia and PNG. Local information and modelling suggests that the globally-significant Torres Strait dugong and turtle populations may be over-harvested, resulting in considerable Australian government investment in community-based management. Islanders living in Torres Strait have a tradition of sharing meat with their relatives on mainland Australia, most of whom are also Native Title holders. Relatively little is known about this influence on the dugong and turtle harvests, or about ways of managing them sustainably. This project will seek to understand the motives for this sharing of meat, the attitudes of the Diaspora to a variety of management strategies and the ways in which the Diaspora would like to be involved in dugong and turtle management.

Chief Investigators: Natalie Stoeckl, Helene Marsh, Felecia Watkin-Lui, Aurelie Delisle

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Business; School of Earth & Environmental Sciences; School of Indigenous Australian Studies; The Cairns Institute

Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities - Northern Australia Water Futures Assessment

The relative values of water for trade-offs

Indicative funding: $165,000

This project is investigating the social and cultural values that people hold for water and water-related activities. In doing so, it seeks to improve our understanding of:

The relative importance of water-related social and cultural values to different people (these ‘values’ may include, but are not limited to things such as swimming, sharing time together beside a river, maintaining culture, recreational fishing)
The way in which those values are likely to be affected by changes in stream flow or water quality
Whether or not different types of people would be willing to trade-off some of those social and cultural values in exchange for ‘economic development’ (e.g. more money) and vice versa
The likely response of different types of people to the consequences of upstream developments that could have thepotential to affectdownstream uses of water.

Chief Investigators: Natalie Stoeckl, Riccardo Welters

Collaborating School: School of Business; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

Australian Learning & Teaching Council - Innovation and Development Grant

A state systems approach to embedding the learning and teaching of sustainability in teacher education

Indicative funding: $151,000 over 2 years

The principle outcome of this project will be the expansion of a state network and the refinement of a systems-wide framework for embedding learning and teaching in Education for Sustainability in teacher education supported by a state-wide systems case study and multiple institutional case studies that can serve as a model for other Australian states and higher education institutions.

Chief Investigators: Bob Stevenson, Julie Davis, Jo-Anne Ferreira and Michelle Larsen

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; School of Education; Queensland University of Technology; Griffith University

Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts

Conceptualising, evaluating and reporting social resilience in vulnerable regional and remote communities facing climate change in tropical Queensland

Indicative funding: $130,000

This project will collaboratively establish an effective set of regional scale indicators that agencies and NRM bodies can use to monitor and evaluate regional-scale community resilience in the face of climate change. These indicators are needed to effectively design, implement and monitor appropriate interventions to improve resilience.

Chief Investigators: Hurriyet Babacan, Allan Dale, Bob Stevenson, Karen Vella, Petina Pert, Alison Cottrell, David King, Helen Boon, Hilary Whitehouse, Penny Scott, Paul Chantrill, John Rainbird, Ro Hill, Iris Bohnet, Doon McColl, Eleanor Sobey, Kate De Smeth, Lisa Stott

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; School of Earth and Environmental Sciences; The Cairns Institute; CSIRO, Terrain NRM, Wet Tropics Management Authority, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Environment, Dept Water, Heritage, and the Arts, Queensland Department of Communities

COMPLETE

Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities: National Environmental Research Program (NERP)

Governance, planning and the effective application of emerging ecosystem service markets to secure climate change adaptation and landscape resilience in Far North Queensland

Indicative funding: $120,000 over 2 years

This project will partner the region’s key stakeholders to review, trial and evaluate the most effective governance systems and planning foundations for regional and landscape scale adaptation to climate change. In particular, within the context of these governance systems and planning arrangements, it will focus on the potential application of emerging ecosystem service markets to secure landscape-scale resilience for biodiversity in the face of climate change.

Chief Investigators: Allan Dale, Karen Vella

Collaborating Institutions: The Cairns Institute; Griffith University

Department of Climate Change - National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility

Recovery from disaster experience: its effect on perceptions of climate change risk and on adaptive behaviours to prevent, prepare, and respond to future climate contingencies

Indicative funding: $111,677 over 3 years

The project aims to examine the beliefs and perceptions of members of 4 communities that have recovered from a disaster experience. We want to: 1) identify private and public sector groups' beliefs, behaviours and policies that have supported community resilience to a disaster event. 2) Construct a model with findings to help implement appropriate and equitable emergency management policies and mitigation strategies for climate change events.

Chief Investigators: Helen Boon, Bob Stevenson, David King, Alison Cottrell, David Lake and Joanne Millar

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; The Cairns Institute; School of Earth & Environmental Sciences; Charles Sturt University

Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation

Accounting for agriculture in place based frameworks for regional development

Indicative funding: $100,039

This project will focus on the contribution of agriculture to regional development and will result in the production of an agricultural development framework to guide policy and practice. Using Far North Queensland agricultural industries and communities as a case study, the framework will provide a basis for examining the potential role of agriculture in contributing to regional development in a range of contexts, and can be used in other regions to engage with agricultural industries and communities in planning for development. While canvassing local issues in the case study, the framework will extract issues of national significance for agriculture and community development.

Chief Investigators: Jim Turnour, Allan Dale, Connar McShane, Marlene Thompson, Margaret Atkinson and Bruce Prideaux

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; School of Arts & Social Sciences; Waminda Women's Health and Welfare Service Aboriginal Corporation; Research & Innovation; School of Business

Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts

Culturally diverse communities and sustainable natural resource use

Indicative funding: $100,000

This research will explore the elements around the key themes of ‘cultural practice’ resource use and biodiversity conservation. It will draw upon critical cultural theory to identify some of the strengths of culturally diverse communities and to consider how traditional knowledge can be utilised for sustainable resource management. A synthesis of the existing research from indigenous communities will be undertaken to establish a framework for this study drawing on the relevance of cultural practice. By drawing on four culturally diverse communities as case studies and relevant indigenous community knowledge, this research will scope social, economic and cultural perceptions in relation to natural resource use and conservation.

Chief Investigators: Hurriyet Babacan, Lisa Law, Susan McIntyre-Tamwoy, Lyndal Scobell

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Environmental Sciences & Geography; School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute; Australian Tropical Forest Institute

COMPLETE

Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population & Communities (NERP)

Rainforest Aboriginal peoples’ Traditional Owner knowledge brokering

Indicative funding: $90,000 over 3 years

Three core objectives of this project are 1) to ensure the transfer of NERP TEH knowledge to Rainforest Aboriginal people (RAP) as research-users in forms that are “accessible, useful and culturally appropriate”; 2) to establish knowledge brokering capability between NERP TEH agencies and researchers, and the Traditional Owner RAP community (two-way engagement at regional, sub regional and individual Traditional Owner group level); 3) to maximise capability of RAP caring for country decision-making and management actions at regional, sub-regional and individual group levels to incorporate relevant knowledge developed through the NERP TEH.

Chief Investigators: Hurriyet Babacan; Robyn Bellafquih* & Jason Wachter* (JYAC); Ken Reys* (CWTICCAC); Claude Beeron* & Phil Rist* (GAC); Leah Talbot* (+ WTMA); Joann Schmider* (+ Terrain NRM); Dr Ro Hill; Mr.Gerry Turpin*; Prof Yvonne Cadet-James*; Assoc Prof Allan Dale
* = Traditional Owner

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; JYAC; CWITICC; GAC; WTMA; Terrain NRM; CSIRO; School of Indigenous Australian Studies

Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education and Nepean Power

eCloud project

Indicative funding: $77,760

The eCloud solution will provide Australian mining and emerging industrial markets such as South America, to integrate remote location sensors and data loggers in to a high availability “cloud” solution for real time data analysis to increase response times to critical environmental data. Sensors will be installed in extreme remote locations ranging from the Andes in South America to mining leases in Central and Western QLD, away from modern hard line communications. The research component of “eCloud” project has the following two goals:

1. Construct data cubes for analysis of water truck usage in relation to dust management on a mine site to minimise water usage in relation to dust and decrease waste water on an industrial site.

2. Environmental data analysis and forward trending to create a base line environmental management plan based on stored data for mine expansion and new projects. The base line will be used against real time sensor data for the life of the mining project.

The core of the project will be to deliver the data in a harmonious and intuitive solution for interpretation by end users in the emerging markets.

Chief Investigators: Ickjai Lee (Research Fellow, The Cairns Institute)

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Business; Nepean Power; The Cairns Institute

Dates: July 2012 – June 2013

Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities - Northern Australia Biodiversity Hub

Relative social and economic values of residents and tourists in the WTWHA

Indicative funding: $70,800

This project will fill critical information gaps about the relative importance of key attributes (or ‘values’) associated with the WTWHA to a variety of different stakeholders and about the way in which those ‘values’ might be effected by a range of external influences (e.g. different types of economic development, increases in population, changes in the mix of visitors).It will also fill a critical methodological gap – testing and refining both ‘traditional’ and state-of-the art techniques for generating estimates of the relative importance of those ‘values’.

Chief Investigators; Natalie Stoeckl, Silva Larsen

Collaborating School/Institution: School of Business; CSIRO; The Cairns Institute

Department of Education, Employment & Workplace Relations - Research Infrastructure Block Grant

Strategies designed to promote the longer term sustainability of the Empowerment Research Program

Indicative funding: $62,478

Literature review to explore the role and contribution that concepts of empowerment and control can make towards better understanding and addressing the social determinants of health and wellbeing for Indigenous Australians.

Chief Investigators: Komla Tsey, Yvonne Cadet-James

Collaborating Schools: School of Education; The Cairns Institute; School of Indigenous Australian Studies

COMPLETE

Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (Inspiring Australia)

Expert working group – Tropical

Indicative funding: $52,500

The project is an initiative to explore and make recommendations to develop strategies to enhance science communication into and for the tropical regions of Australia.

Chief Investigators: Hurriyet Babacan, Allan Dale

Collaborating Institution: The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

Department of Health & Ageing - Rural Health Continuing Education

Delivery of behavioural change (motivational enhancement) workshops to remote Cape York communities

Indicative funding: $50,000
The Train-the-trainer course, run by the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre in Sydney, equips staff to deliver motivational enhancement skills to other staff. This enables them to provide group and individual counselling to substance abusers, s cannabis, to help them make decisions to quit. The project will deliver a minimum of 4 workshops to remote Cape York, with pre and post evalu to quantify workshop effectiveness. The training will provide qualified local staff with certificates to further train staff both current and thus alleviating the obstacles.

Chief Investigators: Komla Tsey, Susan Jacups, Annie Bleeker, Bernadette Rogerson

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; The Cairns Institute

Office for Learning & Teaching (OLT)

Design thinking frameworks as transformative cross-disciplinary pedagogy

Indicative funding: $49,000

Innovation, creativity and problem solving are ranked highly in the list of generic graduate attributes. Design thinking principles and frameworks are considered to be excellent scaffolds for supporting the development of creative and innovative mind sets but there is little empirical research to support this. This project will explore design thinking models as transformative cross-disciplinary pedagogy to develop desired graduate attributes.

Chief Investigators: Neil Anderson, Ton Otto

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; The Cairns Institute

Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts

Biodiversity planning - capturing multiple values in decision-making

Indicative funding: $30,000

Chief Investigators: Ro Hill, Hurriyet Babacan

Collaborating Institutions: CSIRO; The Cairns Institute

Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population & Communities (NERP)

Ensuring NERP Science Informs Next Generation NRM Plans and Regional Development Planning across North Queensland

Indicative funding: $25,000

The objectives of this project are to:

1. Through the lens of next generation NRM plan and RDA Regional Roadmap requirements, synthesise the wide breadth of NERP TE science into key issues and implications that need to be integrated;

2. Through direct partnership between the research and end user partners, collaborate to effect the implementation of the issues and implications into the next generation of NRM and Roadmap planning activity over 2012/2013; and

3. The make preliminary connections between the NERP TE and Northern NERP Hubs concerning emerging implications for NRM planning and regional development across the wider northern Australian landscape.

Chief Investigators: Allan Dale, Karen Vella

Collaborating Institutions: The Cairns Institute; Griffith University

AusAID International Seminar Support Scheme

AusAID International Seminar Support

Indicative funding: $18,771

This funding will support participants from the Asia-Pacific region to attend the International Women’s Conference, 14-15 June, 2012. The conference aims to respond to the ongoing challenges experienced by women and girls in the Asia Pacific region including Indigenous women from all countries including Australia. The forum will bring together people from many disciplines and sectors across the region with the intent of broadening understanding, encouraging debate and stimulating action on the social, economic, political and environmental issues and concerns that confront women in this region.

Chief Investigator: Hurriyet Babacan

Collaborating Institution: The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations - Research, Evaluation and Analysis Panels

Qualitative research panel

Indicative funding: TBA

DEEWR’s Research, Evaluation and Analysis Panels will supply various expertise to undertake research on the Department’s behalf over the next year, with the option to extend for a further two periods of twelve months. The panels have a broad portfolio requirement for research over the next few years. The outcomes will inform the development of policy, program management, evaluation and monitoring strategies across the Department, and will also be used to augment the Department’s advice to Government. JCU has expressed an interest to register on the Qualitative Research Panel which is one of 3 panels.

Chief Investigators: Hurriyet Babacan, Wendy Earles, Komla Tsey, Sarah-Jane Warne, Yvonne Cadet-James and Sue McGinty

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Arts & Social Sciences; School of Education; School of Indigenous Australian Studies; The Cairns Institute

Australian Governments: State

Queensland Health

Implementation of a program of applied research and evaluation focusing on priority issues for the improvement of social and emotional well being and mental health among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of North Queensland

Indicative funding: $1,135,000

The project aim is to implement a program of applied research and evaluation focusing on priority issues for the improvement of social and emotional wellbeing and mental health among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of north Queensland.

Chief Investigators: Yvonne Cadet-James, Komla Tsey, Melissa Haswell-Elkins

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Indigenous Australian Studies; School of Education;; University of New South Wales; Queensland Health, Mental Health Branch

Queensland Government: Smart Futures Fund

Always-connected, always aware, always informed in rural and regional Australia: The digital homestead

Indicative funding: $170,000 over 2 years

The project will investigate how electronic services enabled by connectivity to the National Broadband Network can support greater productivity for farming enterprises, as well as providing related support and social services to rural residents.

Specifically, the project will determine how sensor and related technologies can provide information to simple and usable cloud-based decision support systems for farmers and agriculture advisers, associated with the northern beef industry, which makes up almost half of the total beef sector across Australia, thus forming a key component in driving Queensland's economic growth.

Chief Investigators: Ian Atkinson, Ickjai Lee (TCI Research Fellow), Phillip Pearce (TCI Research Fellow), Zhangyue Zhou (TCI Research Fellow);

Collaborating Schools/Organisations: School of Business; CSIRO, QUT

Dates: July 2012 – June 2014

Queensland Centre for Social Science Innovation (QCSSI)

Wet tropics community resilience indicators

Indicative funding: $100,000

The primary objective of this project is to:

Pilot a new framework for understanding and improving community resilience at regional and sub-regional scale and assess emergent social and institutional adaptation strategies and actions that could be applied across Australia’s most vulnerable tropical regions. As a pilot phase, this will result in the collaborative development and application of community resilience indicators in the Wet Tropics sub region.

Sub-objectives include:

Pilot building the research partnerships and collaborative governance arrangements needed for climate adaptation planning in the Wet Tropics region with key community and government stakeholders at the sub-regional scale;
Mobilise the wider cross-regional (FNQ&TS) partnerships required to implement significant regional climate adaptation strategies;
Monitor and evaluate the efficacy of using community resilience concept and indicators for such a planning approach and as a way to build resilience in vulnerable sub-regional and regional communities to deliver climate change adaptation.

Chief Investigators: Allan Dale, Karen Vella, Bob Stevenson

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; Griffith University

Cairns Regional Council

Inner city partnership project

Indicative funding: $44,307

The Cairns Regional Council CitySafe unit and the Community-based Health Promotion Prevention Studies Group (CHPPS), JCU, aim to work collaboratively on an audit and evaluation of aspects of the public-space closed-circuit television (CCTV) system. The delivery of an effective, coordinated and reliable security service to enhance the safety of people in Cairns is a major component of the CRC goal for a well-presented, safe and secure inner city.

Chief Investigators: Alan Clough, Boris Pointing, Charmaine Hayes-Jonkers

Colaborating Schools: School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine & Rehabilitation Sciences; The Cairns Institute

Department of Health & Ageing - Rural Health Continuing Education

Delivery of behavioural change (movitational enhancement) workshops to remote Cape York communities

Indicative funding: $50,000 over 2 years

The Train-the-trainer course, run by the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre in Sydney, equips staff to deliver motivational enhancement skills to other staff. This enables them to provide group and individual counselling to substance abusers to help them make decisions to quit. The project will deliver a minimum of 4 workshops to remote Cape York, with pre and post evaluation to quantify workshop effectiveness. The training will provide qualified local staff with certificates to further train staff both current in the future.

Chief Investigators: Komla Tsey, Susan Jacups with the help of Annie Bleeker and Bernadette Rogerson

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; School of Education; Public Health & Tropical Medicine

Queensland Centre for Social Science Innovation (QCSSI)

Determining the evidence from twenty years of Aboriginal health and wellbeing programs: a systematic review

Indicative funding: $38,000

The two objectives of this project are: 1) to assess the evidence base for Indigenous health interventions, focusing on child and maternal health,by reviewing twenty years of Indigenous health research, assessing the type of research and extent to which intervention research is methodologically rigorous; and 2) review the literature search results with at least four groups of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers and/or health professionals through focus group discussions, inviting participants to discuss reactions to the literature search results and how results might assist current or future local researchers to identify gaps in the published research literature and potential research opportunities.

Chief Investigators: Komla Tsey, Andrew Wilson, Chris Doran, Anthony Shakeshaft, Yvonne Cadet-James, Janya McCalman, Roxanne Bainbridge

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; School of Education; Queensland University of Technology; University of Newcastle; University of New South Wales, School of Indigenous Australian Studies

Queensland Health

Health priority setting for the Cape York Health Collaboration Project

Indicative funding; $37,824

This is a proposal from a multidisciplinary health research team who have come together to support Cape York Health Service District (CYHSD) in its efforts to transform the District into a family centred indigenous responsive care system. The main objective of our proposal is to develop the necessary baseline data and evaluation framework to enable the CYHSD to determine the extent to which the Integrated Family Centred Indigenous Responsive Care System (Transformation Project) has achieved the stated aims of improving health outcomes based on value for money.

Chief Investigators: Komla Tsey, Chris Doran, Anthony Shakeshaft, Andrew Searles, Prof Yvonne Cadet-James, Janya McCalman

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; School of Education; University of Newcastle; University of New South Wales; School of Indigenous Australian Studies

Qld Dept of Education, Training and the Arts - Indigenous School Support Unit

CYScience research and evaluation

Indicative funding: $30,000

Professor Anderson will design appropriate research instruments and protocols to research and analyse the outcomes of the CYScience project in the Northern Region. This will include examining the success of different modes of PD undertaken during the course of the program and the effectiveness of the program on teacher practice. The website designed for supporting the project will be evaluated by users using a survey designed by Professor Anderson. The research will be presented in a form appropriate for reporting to DEEWR and will form the basis of academic papers in conference proceedings, journals or book chapters. Professor Anderson will host meetings with ISSU staff in relation to the research.

Chief Investigators: Neil Anderson, D Romagnolo

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; Qld Department of Education and Training and the Arts

COMPLETE

Advance Cairns

Fly-In, Fly-Out: Employment in the Tropical North

Indicative funding: $29,724

The project intends to identify (1) the demographics, qualifications, career aspirations and social networks of Fly-in workers and (2) potential FIFO workers residing in the Cairns region. To meet objective 1 we will conduct a survey among FIFO workers at Cairns Airport. Since we wish the sample to be representative of the total FIFO workforce, we need to interview across a completed FIFO roster cycle takes about a month. To meet objective 2, we will develop an online survey where jobseekers interested in FIFO employment can register their interest.

Chief Investigators: Riccardo Welters, Josephine Pryce with the help of Paul Lynch, Laurie Murphy and Anna Blackman

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; School of Business

Report: FIFO workforce in Cairns: Perspectives from Cairns based FIFO workers employed in North-West QLD and Groote Eylandt in NT

Report: Identifying & profiling potential FIFO workers: Perspectives from Far North Queensland

NSW Ministry of Health: The Centre for Aboriginal Health - Sax Institute

Cultural competency in NSW Health Services

Indicative funding: $26,400

A review to identify potential indicators of cultural competency, evidence about the relationship between cultural competency and the delivery of health services and information about the outcomes from intervention trials that have attempted to increase cultural competency will be conducted.

Chief Investigators: Janya McCalman, Roxanne Bainbridge, Anton Clifford, Komla Tsey

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; School of Education; University of Queensland

Cairns Regional Council

Far north innovation hub case study

Indicative funding: $20,000

The aims of this project are to develop a business case for a tropical innovation hub in Far North Queensland including: demand analysis, opportunity assessment, background, business development support requirements, operations aspects, governance model, resources, project expenditure, investment options, project management, risk analysis and other operational and resource requirements.

Chief Investigators: Bruce Prideaux, Ben Menadue

Collaborating School/Institution: School of Business; Cairns Regional Council; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

Qld Government: Department of Natural Resources and Mines

Wet Tropics water resource plan (WRP) community reference panel (CRP) meetings (RFQ)

Indicative funding: $11,000

Chief Investigator: Allan Dale

Collaborating Institution: The Cairns Institute

Regional Development Australia Far North Queensland & Torres Strait

Social and Cultural Planning and Development Implementation Package for RDA FNQ&TS

Indicative funding: $10,000

This project involves:

Coordination and completion of activities for the delivery of the Social and Cultural Planning & Development implementation package (related to the RDA FNQ&TS Regional Roadmap)
Development of the communication strategies to enable RDA FNQ&TS to manage and advance the implementation of the above.

Chief Investigator: Hurriyet Babacan

Collaborating School/Institution: The Cairns Institute

Qld Government: Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Multicultural Affairs

Pathways to excellence for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth and families (Phase I, Phase II & Phase III)

Indicative funding: Phase I $10,000; Phase II $10,000; Phase III $6,364

This project will assess the evidence base for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education and employment, focusing on mentoring, by reviewing twenty years of research, assessing the quantity, type of research and the strength of the research evidence.
It will also review the literature search results with relevant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other Learning Earning Active Places (LEAP) project stakeholders through focus group discussions, inviting participants to discuss reactions to the literature search results and how results might assist the development of an effective LEAP project implementation plan. Using the information obtained through this initial research phase of a project design for a combination of the two LEAP project streams, Pathways to Excellence and Education to Employment will be developed and implemented in a later phase. The project aims to strengthen capabilities and increase access of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to access services, education, training and employment. Pathways Phase 3 (the third and last of 3 phases) will be developed using information obtained Phase 1, which included a literature review of c.40,000 peer-reviewed papers going back to 1984, and reviewed results with relevant Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people and other LEAP project stakeholders through focus group discussions.

Chief Investigators: Komla Tsey; Roxanne Bainbridge; Simon Towle; Biannka Brannigan

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; The Cairns Institute; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services (ATSIS)

PHASES I & II COMPLETE

Qld Government: Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Multicultural Affairs

Steps to success

Indicative funding: $9,950

This project will record the work of community members who have successfully assisted community-controlled entities to transit from being non-compliant to fully compliant highly functioning organisations. The project will involve engagement with the partners from Mareeba and Cairns West, ATSIS and JCU, a small literature review of current qualifications provided via the vocational education and training sector and development of a training guide.

Chief Investigators: Kate Munro; Jim Turnour, Simon Towle

Collaborating institutions: The Cairns Institute; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services

Non Government Organisations

Charles Darwin University ‑ CRN

Collaborative Research Networks CRN NRF

Indicative funding: $453,065

The project is part of an Australian Government Grant to Charles Darwin University to support the development of their social and environmental research capacity. It has two main objectives

First: that Charles Darwin University is nationally recognised as a critical node in social and environmental research for the remote tropical north, working as part of a critical mass of researchers with two of Australia’s most research-intensive universities (Australian National University and James Cook University), and a major research institution (Australian Institute of Marine Science); and

Second: to enable ongoing and sustainable programs of multi-disciplinary collaborative, world-class research that is sought out by both end users and next users for integration into policy and practice.

Chief Investigators: Hurriyet Babacan; Allan Dale

Collaborating institutions: The Cairns Institute; Charles Darwin University

Brain Injury Australia Inc.

The development of a culturally appropriate NDIS assessment process for Indigenous persons living with an acquired brain injury (ABI)

Indicative Funding: $233,405

There are currently no ABI-specific assessment tools or processes that are culturally appropriate for Indigenous persons. This means that Indigenous persons living with ABI will be at a significant disadvantage in terms of accessing the NDIS-funded care and support that they require. The aim of this project will therefore be to prepare for the transition to an environment that includes an NDIS by developing the following:

a culturally appropriate instrument for assessing functioning, cognitive impairment, and the care and support needs of Indigenous persons with ABI;
procedural guidance for engaging Indigenous persons with ABI and their communities so as to administer the assessment instrument effectively;
a support framework for assessors, including guidelines for training, peer mentoring, supervision, management and review.

Chief Investigators: Anne Stephens, Derek Brookes, Jennifer Cullen, India Bohanna, Alan Clough, Deborah Graham, Jim Turnour

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute

Live Life Well Australia

Implementation and evaluation of Wadakin House

Indicative funding: $90,000

This project will build on a scoping study evaluation framework and a suite of evidence-asked psychometric assessment screening instruments already provided by JCU for the Queensland Drug and Alcohol Council (QDAC) for Wadakin House. The goals of this new project are to:

Oversee the data collection and modifications to the evaluation framework;
Work with staff to implement psychometric the stages and phases of the programme;
Conduct appropriate in service training for staff on evaluation and monitoring systems, tools and/or processes.

Chief Investigators: Komla Tsey, Deborah Graham, Alan Clough, Anne Stephens, India Bohanna and Jim Turnour

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; School of Arts & Social Sciences; School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine & Rehabilitation Sciences

Lowitja Institute

Academic Program Leader

Indicative funding: $63,938

The Academic Program Leader will provide academic leadership, advice on research activities that will enhance the program’s objectives, advice that will enable the development of capacity building and research transfer processes within the scope of your program, and will contribute to building good community relations for the National Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research Limited (NIATSIHR) and the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health (CRCATSIH).

Chief Investigator: Komla Tsey

Collaborating School/Institution: The Cairns Institute; School of Education

ACT for Kids: Safe Kids program

Evaluation framework and Family Wellbeing training to Safe House staff

Indicative funding: $50,000

Development of an evaluation framework and delivery of Family Wellbeing training for the staff of five Cape York and Gulf community safe houses. The evaluation framework will incorporate quantitative indicators of workforce capacity, wellbeing, team work and quality of care, and qualitative indicators of implementation, participant satisfaction, reach and intention to apply program effects with family members, work colleagues, care for children resident in the safe houses and the families of resident children. The training is contracted by ACT for Kids as a workforce capacity strengthening strategy.

Chief Investigators: Komla Tsey, Janya McCalman, Cath Brown, Yvonne Cadet-James, Andrew Searles, Mary Whiteside

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; The Cairns Institute; School of Indigenous Australian Studies; Hunter Medical Research Institute, Newcastle; La Trobe University

Gurriny Yealamucka Health Service - Collaborative Research Project

Making a difference: Planning for improved emotional and social wellbeing for Yarrabah

Indicative funding: $11,952

The research will use a process of Action Research (AR) with stakeholders to assist in assessing community needs, developing priorities and making informed decisions towards a community Social and Emotional Wellbeing (SEWB) plan. The aim is to support whole-of-community interventions and strategic actions towards improved social and emotional wellbeing for Yarrabah. Enjoying a high level of social and emotional wellbeing can be described as living in a community where everyone feels good about the way they live and the way they feel. Key factors in achieving this include connectedness to family and community, control over one's environment and exercising power of choice.

Chief Investigators: Roxanne Bainbridge, Komla Tsey and Catherine Brown

Collaborating Schools: The Cairns Institute; School of Education

COMPLETE

International

Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation; University of Aarhus; Moesgård Museum

Innovation in cultural heritage communication

Indicative funding: $1,100,000

The aim of this project is to strengthen and develop a strategic inter-disciplinary and cross-institutional collaboration within the emerging field of user-oriented innovation in cultural heritage communication. This field is situated at the intersection of:

cultural heritage management, conservation and communication
user-oriented innovation in cultural heritage experience
digital communication design

Chief Investigators: Ton Otto, Professor Rane Willerslev, Dr. Ole Iversen

Collaborating Institutions: University of Aarhus and Moesgaard Museum; Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University; The Cairns Institute

PNG Department for Community Development

Nature and extent of disability in PNG

Indicative funding: $430,469

This project will identify the prevalence and nature of disability in PNG. The field work will be undertaken in 2 stages across 8 provinces. The research approach pays critical attention to the social rather than medical perspectives of disability. The project will document the types of impairment (e.g. physical, intellectual) within different demographic groups (e.g. children, older adults, men/women); disability prevalence levels within the population and issues of inequality that may arise due to disability (particularly as they may affect the Millennium Development Goals). The research will identify ways in which individuals, families, communities and workplaces are managing peoples with disabilities. The lived experiences of people with disability will be captured with attention to quality of life factors such as access to education, health and rehabilitation services, employment, communication, discrimination, mobility and support systems. Recommendations will be made in relation to disability services that may be needed at local, provincial and nationwide levels. Factors such as poverty, education, spatial location, discrimination, cultural attitudes and other barriers will be considered in approaches to disability and support mechanisms that may be developed.

Chief Investigators: Hurriyet Babacan, Narayan Gopalkrishnan, Mary Wellington

Collaborating Schools: The Cairns Institute; School of Arts & Social Sciences

PNG National Aids Council - Large Research Grant Program

Seventh Day Adventist Responses to HIV in Papua New Guinea

Indicative funding: $295,650 over 3 years

The Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Church is one of the most influential churches in Papua New Guinea with an extensive range of health, education and social services throughout the country. This research aims to document and analyse SDA policy and theology on HIV in PNG. It will then describe how these policies and theology are interpreted and influence responses to HIV by church leaders, church employees and church members.

Chief Investigators: David MacLaren with the help of Matupit Darius, Tracie Mafile'o, Graeme Humble, Lalen Simeon, Rachael Tommbe, Michael Wood, Ton Otto and Michelle Redman-MacLaren

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine & Rehabilitation Sciences; Pacific Adventist University; School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

PNG Department for Community Development

Community Learning Development Centre (CLDC) information research

Indicative funding: $250,359

Overall aim: To identify how information is viewed, used and utilised at the CLDC level to inform strategies for improving information provision, analysis and flows to and from CLDCs.

The capacity for Community Learning and Development Centres (CLDCs) to act as gateways for other government and nongovernment/civil society service delivery to enable integrated community development (ICD) depends on effective and adequate processes of information provision, analysis and flow. The impact of information, how information is used and who is allowed to have/hold information, whether information is shared and what processes are involved are critical elements in development processes. This project will seek to explore at CLDC level what information is needed, in what formats, with what frequency and time intervals and from what sources with a view to informing information use strategies.

Information needs for community governance, economics, environment and learning are complex and numerous across the many need groups and government and NGO/CSO program areas. Enhancing information use for decision-making is critical for coordinating delivery of services and for informing planning processes. Strengthening information processes that value traditional knowledge and engage all sections of the community and build capacity, while drawing on local and external resources, is an important element of ICD. The increasing role of and access to information and communication technology (ICT) in promoting government and NGO/CSO services is an important consideration.

Chief Investigators: Wendy Earles, Neil Anderson, Sheryl Rasmussen

Collaborating Schools: School of Arts & Social Sciences; School of Education; The Cairns Institute

Alexander von Humboldt Forschungspreis, Germany

The habitats of language

Indicative funding: 60,000 Euro

The project investigates the way in which social and cultural environment is reflected in the languages of the world, and which features are likely to be motivated by the environment. It will contribute to the issue of linguistic sustainability, and explanations for the reasons of linguistic diversity and language development.

Chief Investigator: Alexandra Aikhenvald

Collaborating School: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

Host Institution: University of Cologne

Bikuben Fund (Denmark), University of Aarhus, and the Cairns Institute

Making history for Baluan culture

Indicative funding: $70,000

Film project about cultural, social and economic change in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea. A large cultural festival intended to attract international tourists becomes the showcase for tensions within Baluan society, an island community in Manus, Papua New Guinea. Different ideas about what tradition is, whether and how it can be changed, and what constitutes a desirable future are played out in the performances and conflicts that develop during the festival.

Chief Investigator: Ton Otto

Collaborators: Christian Suhr, film maker and PhD student in Anthropology at Aarhus University and Moesgaard Museum, Denmark and Steffen Dalsgaard (additional camera and assistance with translation)

Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (University of London SOAS) - Small Grants Scheme

A documentation of the Upper Belt variety of Minyong (Adi), Arunachal Pradesh, North East India

Indicative funding: $16,379

The project aims to conduct video and audio documentation of the Upper Belt variety of Minyong (Adi), an endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken in North Eastern India. The project will result in a corpus of culturally representative texts in Minyong language, which will constitute a database for later production of a comprehensive descriptive grammar and bilingual dictionary.

Chief Investigator: Mark Post

Collaborating Schools: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

International Science Linkages – Humanities and Creative Arts Programme (ISL-HCA)

Possession and ownership [International workshop]

Indicative funding: $15,000 by ICA

The International Workshop aims at investigating cross-linguistic features of possessive constructions and ways of expressing ownership in a variety of the world's languages. We also aim at formulating valid generalizations concerning linguistic structures employed to express possession, and their conceptualization and cognitive repercussions in various cultures, including Aboriginal Australia and a number of strategic areas in New Guinea.

It is planned that, resulting from the Workshop, there will be a volume in the series Explorations in Linguistic Typology which will be submitted to Oxford University Press, after their normal refereeing procedures.

Chief Investigator: Alexandra Aikhenvald

Participants in the Workshop: Anne Schwarz, Michael Wood, Tianqiao Mike Lu, Rosita Henry, Mark Post, R. M. W. Dixon, Yongxian Luo, Anne Storch, Gloria Gravelle, Lev Michael, Alan Dench, Zygmunt Frajzyngier, Christa Köing, Felix Ameka, Isabelle Bril

Collaborating School: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (University of London SOAS) - Small Grants Scheme

Documentation and establishment of local archive for Milang, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language of North East India

Indicative funding: $13,231

To document Milang, a highly endangered and virtually unknown Tibet-Burman language of North East India, spoken by around 2000 people in the far north-east of Arunachal Pradesh State at around +28 degrees 25'53" latitude and +95 degrees 2'30" longitude. The project will include a six-month fieldtrip to Arunachal Pradesh, where a rich video- and audio-based corpus of texts will be collected, and a local language archive will be established for the benefit of Milang people.

Chief Investigator: Yankee Modi

Collaborating School: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

Government of Canada - International Research Linkages

Developing approaches to include social considerations in environmental conservation: Ecosystem services and conservation planning

Indicative funding: $10,728

Public support for resource management is critical for effective implementation and compliance of resource management actions. But effective environmental conservation involves consideration of the people who will be affected by environmental management. Developing approaches to include social considerations and ecosystem services in environmental conservation is an emerging and cutting-edge research issue.The goal of this research collaboration is, therefore, to compare and develop approaches that include social considerations in environmental conservation, with two key objectives:

To develop an international collaboration between James Cook University (JCU), Australia, and the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada.
To develop (or expand upon an accepted) conservation planning frameworks to build a conceptual model that emphasizes social and cultural aspects of ecosystem services – with a particular emphasis on distributional issues (such as: who are the providers of and beneficiaries of these services across time, space and stakeholder groups?)

Chief Investigators: Natalie Ban, Kai Chan, Bob Pressey, Natalie Stoeckl, Morena Mills and Christina Hicks

Collaborating Schools: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies; School of Business; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

Foreign Affairs & International Trade Canada International Research Linkages (IRL)

Linking the tropics and sub-arctic in climate change education

Indicative funding: $9,232

The focus of this proposed research linkage is on developing an understanding of what climate change means for preparing culturally diverse and economically poor populations in geographical regions that are particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change, namely the tropical and the sub-Arctic regions. Our interest in climate change education is on understanding how individuals and communities can learn to live with change and uncertainty and develop, for example, adaptive capacity and resilience to the consequences of climate change. A major outcome of this research linkage and the two proposed seminars is intended to be a monograph that conceptualises and identifies research needs in the area of education for climate change adaptation, particularly for vulnerable populations. This activity will lead to the development of a research agenda across two universities in these two regions in two countries on two continents.

Chief Investigators: Bob Stevenson, Hilary Whitehouse, Komla Tsey

Collaborating Schools: School of Education; The Cairns Institute

Collaborating Partners & Institutions: C Russell (Lakehead University, Canada), P Hart (University of Regina, Canada), L Fawcett (York University, Canada), P Berger (Lakehead University, Canada), D Greenwood (Lakehead University, Canada)

COMPLETE

Design anthropology: Intertwining different timelines, scales and movements [International workshop]

Indicative funding: In kind only

Design anthropology is an emergent field and is practiced in different ways depending upon one's methodological positioning. Researchers follow dynamic situations and social relations and are concerned with how people during their everyday activities perceive, create and transform their environments. This view challenges the idea that innovation only refers to the generation of 'new' things as being central to processes of social and economic change.

Chief Investigators: Ton Otto, Wendy Gunn

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute; University of Southern Denmark

American Educational Research Association

International Handbook of Research on Environmental Education

Indicative funding: In kind only

A comprehensive documentation of the most important understandings developed from research in the field of environmental education and critical examination of changes in the field, current debates and controversies, remaining gaps, and potential future directions for research in the field.

It will result in a raised profile of environmental/sustainability education as handbookis being published in a selective new series of research handbooks by world’s largest and most well known educational research association.Will provide a state-of-the-art assessment of the filed for current, emerging and future scholars in environmental/sustainability education.

Chief Investigators: Bob Stevenson, Michael Brody, Justin Dillon, Arjen Wals

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; The Cairns Institute; Montana State University; King’s College, London; Wageningen University; American Educational Research Association

Youth participation and environmental action

Indicative funding: In kind only

Case study of four high school teams conducting year long environmental action projects. Purpose is to examine what they learn about environmental issues, change and leadership from their participation in introductory two day workshop and subsequent year long project and the relationship to the role of advisory teacher in facilitating their project participation and learning.

Chief Investigators: Bob Stevenson, Godfrey Telli, Connie Russell, Dave Bauer

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; The Cairns Institute; University at Buffalo; Lakehead University; Sustainable Earth Solutions, Inc

James Cook University

JCU New Professor Grant

Indicative funding: $25,000

Chief Investigator: Bob Stevenson

Sustainable education collaborative projects [Suite of projects]

Collaborating School: School of Education

Embedding sustainability in teacher education project

As part of Curriculum Refresh, School of Education staff identified education for sustainability (EfS) as a core theme for the school and its teacher education programs. As a result of this, Prof Stevenson led three workshops with staff to begin to develop a collective vision or shared program orientation to EfS and to construct a conceptual framework for guiding curriculum decisions as well as resources to support the integration of sustainability concepts in various classes. This project has been expanded beyond a curriculum development initiative to also be a research project using action research methodology to document, monitor and study individual and collective efforts in embedding sustainability concepts and values within, initially, BEd classes. The intent is to identify the issues and enabling and constraining factors in this process as many universities around the world are beginning to recognise the need to integrate sustainability education into their teacher education programs.

Team members: Michelle Lasen (coordinator), Helen Boon, Snowy Evans, Cliff Jackson, Max Lenoy, Reesa Sorin, Bob Stevenson, Louisa Tomas, Komla Tsey, Hilary Whitehouse

Collaborating School: School of Education

Student engagement and achievement in environmental challenge projects

The purpose of this research project is to investigate the impact of high school students’ participation in environmental challenge projects on their engagement and academic achievement in science and sustainability education. Specifically, the intent is to examine to what extent these student projects reflect scientific rigour and represent authentic academic achievement. One example that will be studied is student submissions to the FNQ regional Ports North sponsored Environmental Awards competition on the issue of water quality. Individual student reports on projects from Year 12 classes in multi-strand science (Science 21), biology and geography that were submitted since the beginning of this regional environmental challenge competition will be analysed. In addition, interviews will be conducted with the educator and environmental scientist panelists who judge the awards and a sample of teachers who have involved students in conducting projects that were submitted. This study is intended to serve as a pilot for an ARC Linkage proposal with Deakin University to investigate the processes and outcomes of a collaborative and community-based competition, Search for Young Scientists Congress, organised by the Regional Educational Centre for Science and Mathematics (RECSAM) in Malaysia.At this congress high school student teams from 11 south-east Asian and Indo-China countries present and defend accounts of their projects to an international audience of peers in a process akin to critical peer review in the scientific community. Case studies of the work of these teams will be compared to both cases of similar environmental inquiry and action projects in Australia (such as the FNQ Environmental Award program) and contemporary science education classrooms on measures of scientific rigour and student engagement, understanding of local and global sustainability and socio-scientific issues, and higher order thinking. This comparison would lead to recommendations for improving science and sustainability education in Australian schools.

Team members: Cliff Jackson, Kathryn Meldrum, Bob Stevenson, Louisa Tomas

Collaborating School: School of Education

Teachers’ environmental, educational and epistemological ideologies and beliefs

Teachers’ involvement in sustainability education is dependent in part on their own environmental and educational ideologies.This raises the research question of how these ideologies, as well as epistemological beliefs (given the complexities and uncertainties of sustainability issues), shape teachers’ understanding and acceptance of EfS and their curriculum and pedagogical approach to EfS. This third project involves theoretical development (i.e., building epistemic and ideological theories) and mixed empirical methods of quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis of pre-service and in-service teachers’ (and possibly school leaders’) worldviews and their relationship to their educational responses to sustainability issues. Analytical frameworks of epistemic identity and environmental and educational ideologies will be piloted with pre-service teachers using some innovative measures involving analysis of dialogue and expressions of positions in relation to vignettes of environmental conflicts.This project will produce a series of publications with the later potential for scaled up grant application.

Team members: Raoul Adam, Helen Boon, Philemon Chigeza, Bob Stevenson

Collaborating School: School of Education

Education for climate change adaptation

Preparing individuals and communities, especially those in vulnerable areas of the world, to be resilient and adaptable to the consequences of climate change is an emerging policy priority for governments at all levels, especially in regions such as the tropics and the sub-Arctic which have been identified as likely to experience the first serious consequences of climate change.Much attention has been focused on education about the science of climate change, but far less has been devoted to understanding how individuals and communities can learn to live with change and uncertainty and develop adaptive capacity and resilience to the consequences of climate change. This project is concerned with conceptualising education for climate change adaptation in theory and practice by examining such questions as: What is an appropriate role of school and community education in climate change adaptation? How can educators respond to this educational challenge without creating despair or engendering false hope among children, youth and adults? What other issues do educators face in taking on this role? What research is needed in education for climate change adaptation?

Team members: Hilary Whitehouse, Helen Boon, Philemon Chigeza, Jen Nicholls, Bob Stevenson

Collaborating School: School of Education

JCU New Professor Grant

Impact of 'mainstreaming' on immigrant and refugee settlement

Indicative funding: $25,000

The broad aim of the project is to examine the impact of mainstreaming on refugee and immigrant settlement in Australia. The specific objectives of the research are:

To identify the service areas/programs of mainstreaming
To examine the facilitative and prohibitive factors for accessing services by immigrants and refugees
To determine if mainstreaming impacts on quality and level of service delivery
To explore specialist skill dimensions of service delivery
To identify models of service delivery that will deliver optimum settlement outcomes

Chief Investigator: Hurriyet Babacan

Collaborating Institution: The Cairns Institute

JCU New Professor Grant

Indigenous Melanesians and technologies of modernity

Indicative funding: $25,000

This project investigates how modern technologies of state control, economic exchange and cultural communication influence and transform the agency of modern rural Melanesians. This project assumes that the integration of these technologies into village life is not just external to local culture and personhood, but that it slowly affects the local cultural forms and thus the ways villagers understand their place in the world and their possibilities to act on that world, in short their agency. It is the aim of this project to investigate how cultural change happens concretely and what this means for Melanesians' opportunities to use the positive potential of modern developments while steering clear of the disruptive impact modernity also often has on their social life.

Chief Investigator: Ton Otto

Collaborating School: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

JCU New Professor Grant

Juvenile justice

Indicative funding: $25,000

Basic research for updating and completion of the fully revised 4th Edition of Cunneen and White, Juvenile Justice, Youth and Crime and Australia, published by Oxford University Press.

Chief Investigator: Chris Cunneen

Collaborating School: School of Law; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

JCU New Professor Grant

Assessing the sustainability of development in Northern Australia

Collaborating School: School of Business

Indicative funding: $18,462

This project will examine some of the social and environmental impacts of, and methods of assessing, development in Northern Australia. Specifically, it seeks to determine:

the extent to which economic development affects the gap between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous incomes;
the extent to which various ecosystem services that are provided by Australia’s Tropical Rivers (e.g. productive, supporting, cultural) compete with or complement each other; and
whether dollar denominated assessment techniques (such as cost benefit analysis), which require one to implicitly assume that the underlying income distribution is optimal, could potentially reinforce trends towards diverging incomes and environmental degradation.

Chief Investigator: Natalie Stoeckl

Collaborating School/Institution: School of Business; The Cairns Institute

JCU Collaboration Across Boundaries Grant

Cross disciplinary HIV research in PNG and Pacific

Indicative funding: $9,450

This project is a collaboration across the social and health sciences on the topic of HIV transmission and prevention in PNG, and more broadly in the Pacific Islands, bringing together two agencies within JCU, namely The Cairns Institute and the Anton Breinl Centre. The project builds on work that is being undertaken in each agency but attempts to bring together cross-disciplinary approaches. This will be achieved through (1) a focus a multidisciplinary focus on issues contributing to HIV transmission, (2) prevention strategies (3) How social, cultural, health and religious issues influence their acceptability of HIV prevention methods.

The project will bring together researchers within ABC and TCI to:

Develop an interdisciplinary framework at JCU for theresearch of HIV transmission and prevention in PNG and more broadly in the Pacific Islands
Write refereed scholarly article identifying research gaps on HIV in the Pacific (building on existing research, existing literature reviews and meta analysis)
Develop a research proposal based on identified gaps in research to be submitted to different funding sources, bringing together JCU researchers from across different disciplines
Identify partners for JCU within PNG, and the Pacific more broadly and in Australia

Chief Investigators: Hurriyet Babacan, Richard Speare, David MacLaren, Michelle Redman-MacLaren

Collaborating School: School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine & Rehabilitation Sciences; The Cairns Institute

JCU Collaboration Across Boundaries Grant

Integrating conservation outcomes from landholder priorities for effective restoration in a Great Barrier Reef catchment

Indicative funding: $9,450

The design of programs for private land restoration and conservation are typically aimed at delivering conservation outcomes (public goods). Rarely do these programs simultaneously aim to deliver outcomes that are relevant and useful to the private landholder (private goods). However, synergies do exist between the delivery of public and private goods: healthy ecosystems, for example, are beneficial to private landholders, such as primary producers and ecotourism operators, and are also important to natural resource managers and the wider community. This project thus aims to

Identify synergies between restoration/conservation and landholder priorities to generate conservation outcomes that are socially effective across the landscape;
Include landholder priorities, where feasible, in restoration and conservation programs in an effort to increase or improve participation rates;
Increase the efficiency of conservationdollars via improved cooperation with landholders; and
Advance communication between landholders and natural resource management agencies to facilitate socially, biologically and economically effective conservation outcomes.

Chief Investigators: Bob Pressey, Natalie Stoeckl, Stephanie Januchowski and Katie Moon

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Business; School of Marine and Tropical Biology; School of Earth and Environmental Sciences; The Cairns Institute

JCU Collaboration Across Boundaries Grant

Preparedness of schools for climate change contingencies

Indicative funding: $9,450

Chief Investigators: Helen Boon, Rick Speare, Komla Tsey, Paul Pagliano, Lawrence Brown, Kim Usher

Collaborating Schools: School of Education; School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine & Rehabilitation Sciences; School of Nursing, Midwifery and Nutrition; The Cairns Institute

JCU Collaboration Across Boundaries Grants

Pacific Imaginings 1920s-1930s: The golden age of the passenger liner

Indicative funding: $9,400

Chief Investigators: Victoria Kuttainen, Anita Lundberg, Lisa Law, Michael Ackland, Margaret Jolly, Ton Otto

Collaborating Schools: School of Arts & Social Sciences; School of Earth and Environmental Sciences; The Cairns Institute

JCU Collaboration Across Boundaries Grants

Tacit Knowledge and Cosmopolitanism in International Partnerships

Indicative funding: $8,800

Chief Investigators: Neil Anderson, Zhangyue Zhou, Chris Cunneen, Michael Singh

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; School of Business; The Cairns Institute

JCU Collaboration Across Boundaries Grants

The nature of diversity: Correlating language and environment in Papua New Guinea

Indicative funding: $8,500

Chief Investigators: Andrew Krockenberger, Alexandra Aikhenvald, Robert Dixon, Mark Ziembicki, Hannah Sarvasy, Gabriel Porolak

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Marine & Tropical Biology; The Cairns Institute; School of Arts & Social Sciences

JCU Centres Research Project Funding

Language and gender: New Guinea, Amazonia and beyond

Indicative funding: $6,500

The multi-faceted notion of gender pervades every aspect of life and of living. Gender differences form the basis for family life, patterns of socialisation, distribution of tasking, spheres of responsibility, and occupational predilections. An understanding of the nature of gender is central to many disciplines -- social sciences such as anthropology, sociology (and, of course, women's studies), criminology, linguistics, and zoology, to name a few. This project will advance a novel research program, systematically investigating gender expression and gender socialisation across a focal selection of languages and cultures, focusing on languages of Australia, Amazonia and Asia-Pacific.

Chief Investigators: Alexandra Aikhenvald, Rosita Henry, Mike Wood, RMW Dixon, Ken Sumbuk, William Steed, Sihong Zhang, Hannah Sarvasy, Dineke Schokkin, Grant Aiton, Meg Rintoul

Collaborating Schools: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

JCU Centres Research Project Funding

Language, contact, agency and cultural change

Indicative funding: $6,500

A fundamental question in understanding language dynamics is how cultural changes in the modern world affect linguistic expression of newly emerging concepts, and the structure of languages. With the advent of new technologies, indigenous communities acquire access to the new means of acquiring knowledge (via radio, TV and internet). Linguistic globalisation results in the spread of major languages, such as English, Spanish and Portugese, and the emergence of new ways of expression. The aim of this project is to trace the ways in which culture changes affect minority languages spoken in the tropical areas known for their high degree of linguistic and cultural diversity, producing changes in peoples' behaviour and in conceptualisation.

Chief Investigators: Alexandra Aikhenvald, Ton Otto, RMW Dixon, Rosita Henry, Mike Wood, Robin Rodd, Sean Ulm, Anne Schwartz, Elena Mihas, Chia-jung Pan, Hannah Sarvasy, Dineke Schokkin, Sihong Zhang

Collaborating Schools: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

JCU Centres Research Project Funding

Educational response to climate change project

Indicative funding; $3,397

Chief Investigators: Hilary Whitehouse, Philemon Chigeza, Bob Stevenson, Helen Boon, Jennifer Nicholls

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; The Cairns Institute

JCU Centres Research Project Funding

Student engagement and achievement in environmental challenge projects

Indicative funding; $3,320

Chief Investigators: Clifford Jackson, Bob Stevenson, Louisa Tomas, Kathryn Meldrum

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Education; The Cairns Institute

JCU Centres Research Project Funding

Developing a conceptual framework for wicked problems in sustainability

Indicative funding: $2,230

Chief Investigators: Komla Tsey, Raoul Adam, Philemon Chigeza, Bob Stevenson, Samantha Morgan, Helen Boon, Jennifer A Nicholls

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: The Cairns Institute; School of Education

JCU ARC Linkage Assistance Grant

Articulating the value-addedness of Australian flexible learning options

Indicative funding: $5,000

Flexible learning options support young people who have disengaged from school to re-engage with education and training. The intention of this project is to showcase the economic benefits of re-engagement, in both a literal dollar sense as this relates to specific measures if improvement in lifetime outcomes as well as in a productivity sense that values young people's potential future input into the community and nation. A matching estimator model will be developed that will demonstrate the link between financial input and outcomes resulting in explication of the benefit of educational intervention to both funding bodies and the wider community.

Chief Investigators: Sue McGinty, Riccardo Welters, Hurriyet Babacan

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Indigenous Australian Studies; School of Business; The Cairns Institute

JCU ARC Linkage Assistance Grant

Homeless Indigenous and CALD Youth

Indicative funding: $4,792

Recent research shows that young people aged 15-25 have twice the risk of housing crisis as the general population with higher rates of housing stress than any other age group.Higher housing costs, difficulties in the rental market, domestic violence and family breakdown mean that more youth are accessing homelessness services. However there is no research about the extent of this problem among CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) youth in Australia. The proposed research will examine this problem by a comparative study across three diverse sites: Cairns, Darwin and Melbourne to find out the barriers faced by CALD youth when attempting to access homeless services. The research is significant in that it will also evaluate service cross the three sites to produce a best practice model of service delivery for these youth.

Chief Investigators: Glenn Dawes, Alan Clough, Nerina Caltabiano, Hurriyet Babacan, Russell Hawkins, Narayan Gopalkrishnan

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Indigenous Australian Studies; Anton Breinl Centre for Public Health & Tropical Medicine; School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

JCU FAESS Capacity Building Grants 2012

Investigating the potential for design thinking for higher education

Indicative funding: $7,000

The outcome of this research will be the development of a model for the broad-based integration of design thinking in the higher education curriculum. This will foster students’ creative skills critical for 21st century living including their well-being and capacity to make a strong contribution to innovation in future workplaces and community development. It will involve extensive document research regarding the current use of design thinking in higher education; investigate the use of design thinking skills in higher education subjects at James Cook University and the perceptions of staff and students, and how it might strengthen tertiary students’ creative skills and innovative mindsets.

Chief Investigators: Neil Anderson, Ton Otto with the help of Snowy Evans, Theresa Petray, Victoria Kuttainen, Raoul Adam, Kelsey Halbert

Collaborating Schools: School of Education; School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

JCU Scholarship (over 3 years)

‘Skin has eyes and ears’. Visual anthropological research project into changes in perception and agency

Indicative funding: $124,500

This ethnographic research project into perception and sensory experience of the Karawari-speaking Ambonwari from the East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea is titled: ‘Skin has eyes and ears.’ According to the Ambonwari there has always been a kind of interrelationship between the two main senses, seeing and hearing. This project explores what kind of relationship is established between the outside world perceived through the senses and the internal world of thoughts and feelings, and how the camera with its audio-visual record can show people’s ongoing modification of perception. The inherently reflexive acts of seeing and being seen and of hearing and being heard will be approached through dialogic editing integrating two perspectives: that of the ethnographer and that of the Ambonwari people.

Chief Investigator: Daniela Vavrova (PhD student)

Collaborating Schools/Institutions: School of Arts & Social Sciences

RIBG

Linguistic diversity in the tropics

Indicative funding: $25,000

Tropical areas of the world are a locus of extreme linguistic diversity. A fundamental question in understanding the dynamics of languages and cultures lies in explaining the nature of this diversity, which is akin to biodiversity. Similarly to biodiversity of the species, linguistic and cultural diversity across the globe is endangered. Salvaging and documenting linguistic and cultural heritage is a major component of JCU's and FAESS's commitment to indigenous and minority futures, with a general objective of understanding the past so as to build a brighter and more sustainable future. The project focuses on language and culture change and interaction in the Sepik area of PNG.

Chief Investigator: Alexandra Aikhenvald

Collaborating School/Institution: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

COMPLETE

RIBG

Internet interfaces

Indicative funding: $24,500

Chief Investigator: Ton Otto

Collaborating School: School of Arts & Social Sciences; The Cairns Institute

Researchers in Residence

Alternative sentencing and justice outcomes for Indigenous people

Currently there are various alternative processes for working with Indigenous people in the criminal justice system in Queensland. These include JP magistrates courts, the Murri Court and community justice groups. There is also a statewide Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Justice Agreement which expires in 2011 and a new national Indigenous Law and Justice Framework which has just been endorsed by COAG. These agreements provide the broader framework within which Indigenous justice alternatives operate within Queensland. The aim of this project is to provide an overall analysis of the outcomes of alternative indigenous justice processes in Queensland and to assess how well they fit the current COAG framework. A more general aim is to enhance Indigenous access to justice and social justice outcomes.

Fellow In-Residence: Heron Loban

School: School of Law

Analysis of sound in experimental film

This project arises from the identification of a niche in regard to both film-sound in general and particularly to analysis of sound in Experimental or New Media Art screen works. Analysis of sound in experimental film is typically text-based, requiring the reader to either have detailed knowledge of a film’s sound as the analysis is read, or access to a film and the capacity to listen, rewind/pause the film as the text analysis is read. In both, this process results in considerable time devoted to learning/understanding the meaning and roles sound plays in a particular film.

The project envisages the development of a rich-media software platform wherein details previously offered only through text-based analysis can be codified, viewed and heard in more detail and in a more concise format. The software will allow the analyst to view details of content in the primary areas of dialogue, music and effects (DME), and the many subcategories of each. Codification of sound will be in multiple and various formats: tabulation, semiotic, music reduction, and text, dependant on the film/sound analysed. Relationships between sound and image will be similarly codified according to diegetic and non-diegetic sound use and the subcategories of these.

Fellow In-Residence: Steven Campbell

School: School of Creative Arts

Anticipating Chinese tourism to northern Australia

Forecasters are in widespread agreement that outbound tourism from China will grow very rapidly in the next decade with a commonly reported figure being 100 million outbound tourists by 2020 (UNWTO, 2010).Attracting a mere half of one percent (0.5%) of these visitors to northern Australia would realize 500,000 visitors annually which presents substantial conceptual and pragmatic issues.This project will explore, for northern Australia, the community and key stakeholder understanding of, and readiness for, large numbers of Chinese visitors.

Fellow In-Residence: Phillip Pearce

School: School of Business

Ayahuasca use, behaviour change and immune system functioning in Australia

The use of Ayahuasca, a powerful psychoactive plant decoction, is growing worldwide while little is known about its impact on human health nor its use in Australia. North Queensland is the only region in the first world where the tropical plant constituents of Ayahuasca are grown. This project will build on research into the immune system functioning and mental consequences of the emergent phenomenon of Ayahuasca use and the social and medical understanding of how this new pattern of drug use may affect the quality of life of people living in North Queensland.

Fellow In-Residence: Robin Rodd

School: School of Arts & Social Sciences

Community resilience and climate change adaption

This project’s aims are to examine the responses of four communities impacted by climate change weather events. We are looking at their adaptation and resilience to climate disasters with a view to constructing a generic model of community resilience that links individual resilience to community resilience, something which has not yet been done. Most measures of resilience have either measured the resilience or the resilience of cities or communities but the link between the two, if indeed there is a link, has not yet been examined.

Fellow In-Residence: Helen Boon

School: School of Education

An electronic cultural atlas of North Queensland and the Torres Strait: A virtual heritage project

Taking advantage of research generated at JCU that identifies and addresses cultural aspects of life in the tropics, this project will create an interactive online site that presents a map of the region to the viewer who will be able to click on specific parts of the map and see what research has been done on the various aspects of the region and then download or read either an abstract or full text of that research.This project will also provide researchers at JCU a unique and dynamic opportunity to disseminate their research and create data pool for other researchers.

Fellow In-Residence: David Salisbury

School: School of Creative Arts

Investigation into tourism trends in tropical North Queensland

This project will build on current research funded by the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility to investigate tourism trends in the Wet Tropics Rainforests and the Great Barrier Reef.Research will be directed at identifying emerging trends that may be used to assist the region’s tourism industry.The project is designed to produce research that is of direct benefit to businesses, management agencies and residents in the North Queensland region. It will also develop new management tools able to be used by protected area managers.

Fellow In-Residence: Bruce Prideaux

School: School of Business

Learning modes – Stage 2

This empirical research surveys final year tertiary business students across different campuses regarding their perceived views concerning traditional, blended and flexible teaching and learning approaches. A structural equation modeling approach will be used to investigate and compare traditional teaching and learning modes. Theoretical and practical research implications will be presented.

This research will give tertiary institutions deeper understanding of the benefits of various delivery modes at different undergraduate year levels. It may then allow JCU and the Faculty to develop smart and targeted learning mode solutions – ones more in-line with the perceived needs of their respective students year levels and groups.

Fellow In-Residence: John Hamilton

School: School of Business

Murray Bail and contemporary Australian fiction

Murray Bail is one of Australia’s most important authors, and enjoys a deservedly high international standing. Like his contemporary Peter Carey, he moved during the 1970s from a career in advertising to full-time creative writing, and has been the recipient of such major awards as the Miles Franklin and the Commonwealth Literature Prizes. His writing stands at the forefront of what is most innovative and intellectually challenging in Australian letters.

His work embraces short fiction, novels and non-fiction, and he has written extensively and impressively about the visual arts. The scope and themes of his work are genuinely trans-national and global, and they touch on our designated research areas in a number of ways, whether in two comprehensive monographs on the painter Ian Fairweather, who lived for long periods in Asia and made his home in Queensland (with a `studio’ on Bribie Island), or in novels with settings in tropical Africa and Ecuador, as well as in outback Australia.

This fellowship will provide time to write a monograph of approximately 70,000 words for a proposed series on contemporary Australian writing for the American publisher Cambria Press. This monograph will enhance cultural understanding in the tropics, as well as add to the Institute’s reputation for cutting-edge, international-quality research.

Fellow In-Residence: Michael Ackland

School: School of Arts & Social Sciences

Organisational and human capacity-building for regional child protection and development policy implementation

The national Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children 2009-2020 has combined child protection and early childhood policy fields and favors the use of non-profit funding brokerage models. Such policy implementation in regional areas is premised on the existence of appropriate human and organizational capital. This is not always the case (Centacare, 2007; Queensland Department of Child Safety, 2006). Organizational capital is conceived as “processes of organizing” alongside human capital (peoples’ skills and knowledge) (Guthrie, 2008).

Current national attention is on workforce development in response to evidence of a human capital crisis (ACOSS, 2007; CSHISC, 2006). There is less emphasis on organizational development despite an link between policy capacity and organizational capacity (Cassidy, Leviton & Hunter, 2006). This project will review work on the organizational capital construct and develop a research program to address its utility in regional policy implementation. The project will consolidate and extend existing empirical industry-based organizational case analyses by facilitating a shift from individual case analysis to collaborative meta-synthesis, grounded theory and practice tool development partnership which involves a consortium of non-profit and for-profit provider organizations, JCU and a state department.

Fellow In-Residence: Wendy Earles

School: School of Arts & Social Sciences

Pre-service teacher self-efficacy and resilience

This longitudinal project examines the teaching self-efficacy of pre-service teachers over a period of 18 months and explores how it links to their resilience. Self-report data has been collected from the current 3rd year cohort of students in the Townsville campus in four instances over 18 months and it is now ready to be analysed and reported. The data is based on items about perceived self-efficacy of teaching, including pedagogies, behavior management and motivation of students and items about personal resilience. The second and subsequent surveys also include information about students’ perceptions about the subject offerings in the School of education and in order to examine the extent to which self-efficacy for teaching is supported by achievement in the subject studied and by which subjects in particular.

Fellow In-Residence: Helen Boon

School: School of Education

Reducing car related crimes by Indigenous youth through interacting with a culturally appropriate driver education

The National Road Safety Strategy (2001-2010) recognises that young Indigenous people are three times more likely to be involved in road fatalities than other Australians. Indigenous youth are over represented in car related crimes such as joyriding (Dawes, 2000), not wearing seat belts, driving under the influence of substances and driving without a licence. As a result a high number of Indigenous youth interact with the juvenile justice system and are detained.

The Cleveland Education and Training Centre (within Cleveland Detention Centre) has developed a programme to assist Indigenous youth to obtain a driver’s licence through a Driver Education Programme. Education Queensland is eager to undertake an independent evaluation of the programme to reduce car-related crimes. The aims of this research are:

To evaluate the effectiveness of the driver education programme in reducing car related crime and road fatalities across urban and remote communities in North Queensland.
To gain perceptions of Indigenous youth about the programme through focus group and individual interviews while they are in detention and after they have reintegrated back to their communities across North Queensland.
To provide a national best practice model for driver education programmes that could be used in other detention settings to reduce high risk driving behaviours by Indigenous youth.

Fellow In-Residence: Glenn Dawes

School: School of Arts & Social Sciences

Risk and protective factors for disturbances in body image and eating: Outcomes of a two year longitudinal study of early and middle adolescents

This secondment allows an extended stay at Southwest University, Chongqing, a setting that houses the second most ranked Psychology department in China and world-class research facilities. While there I can complete ambitious longitudinal research that elucidates biological, psychological, and sociocultural influences on weight concerns, body dissatisfaction and disordered eating among adolescents, a group particularly vulnerable to these experiences. Nearly 3,100 adolescents completed the 2008 baseline and an estimated 2,000 of them will be followed through to the final phase (March, 2010). Consequently, this is the largest longitudinal project on body image veer conducted outside of the US.

Furthermore, during this secondment I will write up new projects 1) explaining individual differences in susceptibility to appearance pressures from media and interpersonal sources, 2) identifying biological bases of body dissatisfaction, 30 documenting the epidemiology of pain in urban China, and 4) elaborating neural and behavioural correlates of experimental pain.

Fellow In-Residence: Todd Jackson

School: School of Arts & Social Sciences

Services gateways – Building the business intelligence components

This research will add to the knowledge of business customer interfaces, and will set additional frameworks for critical business engagement with customers. It will also expand the background knowledge necessary for a competitive grants application.

Fellow In-Residence: John Hamilton

School: School of Business

Signature Projects

Creative industries sector in Far North and Northern Queensland

This research project is focussed on the economic and cultural area of activity known as the ‘creative industries’. Driven by those with a passion for creativity and innovation, the participants in this sector include individuals, collectives, small-medium enterprise through to large corporations and government departments.It is regarded as one of the fastest growing areas of economic activity in the world. In Queensland alone, the creative industries sector is estimated to contribute $3.4 billion to the economy, including $1.1 billion worth of exports.

Specifically, this project focuses on the creative industries in far north and northern Queensland. The sector in this geographical area is rich in diversity and participation and vibrant in terms of activity. It includes various modes of operation and practice, such as:

the presentation of creative outputs for audience interaction and enjoyment;
the development of new and innovative outputs or methods of working;
the production of commercially oriented products and services specifically designed for audiences and markets;
a range of community focussed, grass roots activities and initiatives; and
government and education stakeholders who provide leadership, training and support services for the sector.

The researchers welcome contact and inquiry from those within and external to the sector.

Chief Investigator: Ryan Daniel

Collaborating School: School of Creative Arts

Department of Education, Employment & Workplace Relations

Cultural atlas

Indicative funding: $73,367

Based in the tropics and committed to the study of people and societies in this special environment, The Cairns Institute sees it as one of its central tasks to document and analyse the enormous social and cultural diversity in the region and make this information accessible to governments, communities, and business. A key tool will be the development of a cultural atlas of tropical Australia, to be expanded to other strategic regions if resources permit. The aims of the Atlas are:

To systematically bring together existing knowledge about North Queensland
To identify gaps in our knowledge and add to existing knowledge within the defined themes
To research key social issues impacting on North Queensland
To share our knowledge with broader communities

Chief Investigators: Hurriyet Babacan, Stephen Torre

Collaborating Schools: Will involve cross-disciplinary collaborators from across JCU

Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR)

Quality of life index

Indicative funding: $40,184

Chief Investigator: Gianna Moscardo

Collaborating School: School of Business

Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR)

An analysis of the future sustainability (economic and environmental) of tourism in northern Australia

Indicative funding: $15,000

This project will investigate a range of issues that are likely to affect the future long term economic and environmental sustainability of tourism in northern Australia. Tourism is a major industry in northern Australia defined for this project as the region stretching from the east coast to the west coast and all areas north of Mackay.

Chief Investigator: Bruce Prideaux

Collaborating School: School of Business

Wellbeing in tropical societies

Across social and cultural diversity people need negotiate understanding and to develop means of communication and collective action. Policy making requires tools for comparing life situations and setting desired goals. Therefore The Cairns Institute sees it as an urgent task to take up the issue of the commensurability of different value systems and to contribute critically to the development of criteria that can be applied cross-culturally (variously called: quality of life; social quality; economic viability).

Chief Investigator: Ton Otto

Collaborating Schools: Will involve cross-disciplinary collaborators from across JCU

Other Projects

Rice, biodiversity and food security

The Ramsar convention (est. 1971) is the global convention on wetlands. The project is in response to Resolution X.31 from the 10th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971) “Healthy wetlands, healthy people” in Changwon, Republic of Korea, in late 2008. A follow-up workshop was held in Japan in August 2010 by Ramsar’s Science and Technical Review Panel. Here, they agreed to an information gathering strategy to review pesticides and rice, and food security and biodiversity.

This project will review existing literature and international views on global food security, Asian rice production and impacts on biodiversity. It will look at projected global food shortages, and proposed international responses to increased rice production. The impacts of increased rice production across Asia will be reviewed in relation to wetland biodiversity, species conservation, sustainable food production, cultural practices, and gender inequality.

Chief Investigator: George Lukacs, Lyndal Scobell, Max Finlayson

Partners: East Asian Region Ramsar Centre, Korea; Ministry of Environment, Japan; International Rice Research Centre, Philippines

Collaborators: The Cairns Institute; Australian Centre for Tropical Freshwater Research; Institute of Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University

Related sites:

Selling the swamp (ABC North Queensland interview with Nathalie Fernbach)

Asia rice output threatened by pesticide overuse (Martin Abbugao, Agence France-Presse, ABS-CBN News, 3 June 2011)

Rice and Wetland Biodiversity...the voice of our STRP lead on Agriculture (STRP Newsletter, 1, 2011)

Researcher joins world wetland expert panel (Media Release, 27 March 2009)