Australian Studies Commons^™

Cool Christianity: Hillsong And The Fashioning Of Cosmopolitan Identities, Fernando Berwig

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

A book review is presented for Cool Christianity: Hillsong and the Fashioning of Cosmopolitan Identities, authored by Cristina Rocha, by Fernando Berwig.

Decolonising Narratives Through Sonic Artistry And Weaving Dialogues: A Trans-Indigenous Exploration, Adam Manning, Sara Motta

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

As a First Nations artist walking and working in collaboration with other Indigenous creatives, in this piece I explore in dialogue with my sister Sara, the reinterpretation of Beethoven's fifth symphony, seeking to address and alter the colonial narratives linked to a Beethoven sculpture accessed via a QR code. The Beethoven sculpture serves as a means for cultural reinterpretation and decolonisation through modification of Beethoven’s Fifth, Movement One. This exploration extends beyond aesthetic expression evolving into a creative, disruptive and potentially generative intervention. This sonic intervention-disruption questions established ideas and encourages a dialogue that surpasses temporal boundaries, offering a new-ancient …

Sacred Steps: Walking, Religion, And The Path To Peace, Francesca Benna

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Walking is one of the simplest and most primordial human acts, yet it carries profound meanings that transcend cultures, religious traditions, and paths of individual and collective transformation. Walking is not merely a means of movement but a practice that fosters reconnection with oneself, the environment, and the community. Bruce Chatwin, in The Songlines (1987), highlights how nomadism is an inherent human condition, suggesting that movement is essential not only for physical survival but also for mental and spiritual well-being. In an era marked by environmental crises, conflicts, and increasing technological alienation, rediscovering the value of walking responds to a …

Supporting Comparative Studies Of Judicial Behavior: Introducing The Australian High Court Database, Patrick Leslie, Zoë Robinson, Russell Smyth, Tonja Jacobi

Faculty Articles

Comparative research on law and legal institutions depends on high-quality data infrastructure. This article introduces the Australian High Court Database—a new resource that encodes structured information on all full judgments of the High Court of Australia between 1995 and 2020, and all leave applications (Australia’s equivalent to petitions for certiorari) from 2003 to 2018. The database is built in accordance with core principles that support comparative research: it is adaptable, and comparable. By attending to jurisdictional specificity while adhering to general standards, the database supports both within-country analysis and cross-national comparison. We illustrate how the Australian High Court Database can …

Collaborative Leadership In Disaster Mitigation Development In Australia, Chidimma A. Abuka

The Scholarship Without Borders Journal

Background: In light of escalating environmental risks due to climate change, rigorous research in natural disaster mitigation is gaining significance. The United Nations’ (UN) 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) address disaster mitigation broadly, calling attention to both natural and human-induced crises. Australia has the fourth highest score globally in Freeman & Hancock’s (2017) Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience-Building (DRRR) Index. This research explores the aspects of collaborative leadership and sustainable development pathways to understand what is working in Australian communities and to address multifaceted challenges surrounding the further improvement of community resilience in Australia.

Existing Literature: Many studies emphasize the …

Illuminating Women’S Interwar Australian Ghosts Stories In A Tabletop Roleplaying Game - Methods, Processes And Aesthetics, Matthew Sparksman

Postgraduate

Australian voices are underrepresented in international media, particularly in the medium of Tabletop roleplaying games. Women’s voices and access to publishing media were rapidly retaken by men after the Great War, including the mediums of Ghost Stories, Film, and other media (Handasyde, 2017, p.18; Ohri, 2018, p.386). This can also be illustrated in the shift in archetypes of ghostly tales to be dominated by that of the “suffering and sacrificed male exiled to death far from home” (Kelly cited in Carleton, 2015, p.21; Kelly, 2007, 18). It is therefore important that we seek to find and value such artefacts that …

Pork Problems - Embodied Britishisms Onboard The First Fleet To Australia, Evelyn Lambeth

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Pigs arrived in Australia with British settlers onboard the First Fleet in 1788 and rapidly spread. As a product of British Imperialism, Australia has adopted many cultural consumption practices from its parent colony. Meat is on many tables, but not every table showcases the same animal, and these cultural differences illustrate that conditions of edibility are not equally defined. British values were attached to pigs, embedding them with transformative abilities to shape colonial ecosystems. Australian industries, jobs, and livelihoods are deeply connected to the past. The East India Company introduced Chinese pigs to Britain from 1685. The history of pigs …

The Question Of Design In The Context Of The First Australian Nations: Designing Reparations Through Decolonial Architecture, Eli Abamonte

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Forget about tourist postcards and picture-perfect landscapes. Australia's true heart beats in the ancient stories of the Indigenous communities that tell them, their vibrant cultural tapestry woven beneath the surface. My research dives into this tapestry, not as an Architect with blueprints imposing my own vision, but as a student with an open ear and collaborative spirit. Australia’s vastness holds countless stories, but my research led me deep into the heart of East Arnhem Land, where ancient legends whisper in the wind and the Yolngu people dwell. Anthropologists like Bruno Descola shattered my singular view of the world, revealing a …

Rachel Franks, Double Agent: A Librarian And A Crime Author - William Blick Interviews Rachel Franks (January 2024), William Blick

Publications and Research

The following is an interview from January 2024 with Librarian and Crime Scholar, Rachel Franks and was posted on the Captivating Criminality Blog:

Rachel Franks is the Coordinator, Scholarship at the State Library of New South Wales and an Honorary Associate Lecture at The University of Newcastle (Australia). She holds PhDs in Australian crime fiction (Central Queensland University) and in true crime texts (University of Sydney). A qualified educator and librarian, her extensive work on crime fiction, true crime, popular culture and information science has been presented at numerous conferences, as well as on radio and television. An award-winning …

The Moogai, Dereck Daschke

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Moogai (2024), directed by John Bell.

The New Boy, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The New Boy (2023), directed by Warwick Thornton.

The Experience Of Awe In Nature And Its Implications For Sustainability, Ella Shriner

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Awe is a complex emotion and a relatively new field of psychological study. Previous studies have looked at the benefits of spending time in nature including spurring environmental action, and how awe is felt in nature. In this study, I investigate the connection between these two ideas by addressing the questions of how Awe is experienced in the Northern Rivers region of Australia, and whether small and big moments of awe motivate people to take environmental action and connect them to their community and the natural world. For this study, I conducted 15 interviews, collected 51 surveys, and personally explored …

Garden Etiquette, Kai Wasikowski

Masters Theses

Garden Etiquette is an ongoing project concerned with landscape photography, environmental conservation, and the way they have both served the settler colonialist agenda. I focus specifically on the conservation ideologies shaped in New South Wales (NSW) Australia and New England, United States of America (USA) in the late nineteenth century and the settler visualities that underwrote them. Both countries’ histories were marked by photography and conservation’s common function of mythologising land as empty space—to be invaded, extracted and occupied, and wilderness—to be territorialized and protected, albeit, in distinct ways.

With British, German and Polish settler ancestry, born and raised on …

The Patterns Of Yarning, Adam Manning, Sara Motta

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The Patterns of Yarning is a 3-minute digital visualisation that's based on the accompanying sunrise themed sonic yarning audio.

Australian Churches During Coronatide: Lessons & Opportunities, Pieter-Jan Bezemer, Sten Langmann

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Christian churches have played a pivotal role in the social and economic fabric of many Western countries over centuries. However, in many of these countries national censuses have revealed significant declines in the number of people that associate themselves with Christianity. For example, the latest census of the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that in 2021 less than half of the population was still affiliated with Christianity. This gradual but steady decline has had a significant impact on churches, as it has become more challenging to maintain church communities and church buildings, and serve the wider community. Early in 2020, …

Death Spaces And Distant Skies (Every Day We Say Goodbye), Renee Estee

Theses and Dissertations

Linking ideas and imagery of the Australian Outback, Hauntology and Orphism, my practice highlights myth-making and rituals surrounding mourning, celebration and commemoration. Operating as visual love letters and epitaphs, my paintings coalesce figuration and abstraction to conjure spaces where I can commune with the deceased and contend with future loss.

From Paternalism To Superiority: Colonial Ideologies Of The New Norcia Mission, 1847-1974, Evie Levin

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Coloured On The Spectrum: An Autoethnographic Examination Of Autistic Dissonance In White Australia, Black Africa, Academia & Creative Industries, Jordan Azor

Postgraduate

My dissertation is an Autoethnographic examination of Autism diagnosed in adulthood. I aim to provide authoritative, first-person perspective into experiences and reflections of a lifetime of dysfunction leading to diagnosis and the process of reconciling new diagnosis in maturity. Through Habitus and Intersectionality I retrospectively and retroactively explore issues of race, cultural context, social dysfunction, ineffective communication and professional breakdown. I provide insight into social and personal revelations informed by contextualising past experiences through the lens of then undiagnosed Autism and propose new responses and amendments of behaviour and conduct explored which seek to and effectively establish and maintain greater …

Self-Portraits For Social Change: Audience Response To A Photovoice Exhibition By Women With Disability, Diane Macdonald, Angela Dew, Karen Fisher Assoc Prof, Katherine Boydell

The Qualitative Report

Negative attitudes about and behaviours towards women with disability are harmful and exclusionary, contributing to poorer health, income, educational, and employment outcomes. Our study focused on what audiences learnt, felt, and did (what changed) after viewing self-portraits and stories by women with disability. We questioned whether a public exhibition of their artworks, created through photovoice methodology, could be an effective platform to provoke social change and increase inclusion for people with disability. We collected audience response to our exhibition to address a research gap and to provide an example for other photovoice researchers. We employed interpretive thematic analysis through a …

"That All May Justice Share: Sydney Catholics In The Interwar Years 1919-1929, Monica Van Gend

Theses

While the years immediately following Australia’s participation in World War I have received much academic attention, the churches in the post-war era have been largely overlooked. Responding to Michael McKernan’s claim that Australian churches became less relevant to Australian society after the war, this thesis examines the response of the Catholic Church in Sydney to life after the war. Utilising a dual methodology of religious history and social history, this thesis analyses the role of the Church at this time by examining its works and activities, drawing on primary sources in Archdiocesan archives and the archives of specific Catholic lay …

Tourism Trails And Resurgent Pathways: An Exploration Of The Nexus Between Indigenous-Led Tourism And Resurgence Discourses Alongside Karajarri Traditional Owners Of The Saltwater Kimberley, Australia, And Beyond, Bobbie Chew Bigby

Theses

This research explores the intersections between Indigenous-led tourism and resurgence among Indigenous communities. Resurgence is understood as practices promoting connections with culture, Country (i.e. Indigenous lands and waterways), and community. The research utilises a comparative case study approach to specifically analyse the experience of Karajarri Traditional Owners (TOs) of the saltwater Kimberley region of northwestern Australia. Comparative examples are drawn from Indigenous-led tourism development by other coastal Kimberley Aboriginal tourism leaders, as well as from the author’s own Tribal Nation, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, United States.

The conceptual framework for this work is derived from the following concepts from …

Refugee Policy In Australia And New Zealand: An Approach For Resettling Environmentally Displaced Persons?, Sedina Sinanovic

Master's Theses

An increase in human mobility as a consequence of climate change induced slow-onset environmental degradation and sudden-onset natural disasters is expected to be a defining feature of the 21st century. Inexorably shifting the global migratory landscape, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) approximates that roughly 250 million people will be forcefully displaced due to adverse climate impacts by 2050. While there is no international consensus on appropriately categorizing such people, this thesis refers to them as "environmentally-displaced persons" (EDPs). Since EDPs do not qualify for "refugee" status, they are not afforded access to assistance under the 1951 Convention …

Eggs, Hair, Seeds, Milk, Patrick West

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Short story

Summer On The Swan River, 1953, Lawrence A. Smith Mr

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Memories of the Swan River, Perth, Western Australia, 65 years ago.

After Rain, Louise Boscacci

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Amidst climate chaos, words gather as a tipping point in after-affect. On January 4, 2020, the massive Currowan bushfire in New South Wales crossed the Shoalhaven River and raced into the Wingecarribee district of the Illawarra region south of Sydney. After two weeks of emergency warnings, a new preternatural “catastrophic” danger rating, watch and act alerts, and heatwave temperatures, the fire front arrived on a blunt southerly gale in the evening. Climate breakdown had delivered locally and personally. The next day, light rain, more drizzle than shower, visited the home fireground.

Looking For Marianne North, John Charles Ryan

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This poem reflects on the life of peripatetic botanical illustrator Marianne North (1830-1890) who travelled to Southwest Australia in 1880.

Critically Imagining A Decolonised Vision In Australian Poetry, Cassandra Julie O'Loughlin

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Postmodern ecocriticism, given its broad range of perspectives, offers an agreeable platform for articulating a new, advanced and inclusive framework for a decolonising theorisation of literature and the environment. This article seeks to identify Australian Western decolonising poetry that sits in harmony with Indigenous aural and literary versions of communicative engagement with Country. The concept of human embeddedness in ecological relationships and biological processes as part of a complex matrix of interdependent things is embraced. In particular this article focuses on inclusivity and interconnectedness of all life forms to illustrate aesthetic and conceptual interfaces between Aboriginal Australia and Western poetics. …

The Dancing Between Two Worlds Project: Background, Methodology And Learning To Approach Community In Place, Anindita Banerjee, Shaun Mcleod, Gretel Taylor, Patrick L. West

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This article recounts the history to date of the Dancing Between Two Worlds (DBTW) project, which was initiated by a team of artist-scholars at Deakin University in 2018. DBTW’s brief was to engage the Indian community living in the western fringes of Melbourne in a project on civic belonging, cross-cultural artistic identity, and the performance of outer-suburban Indian diaspora. Working with the creative and community energies that are activated at the intersection of the creative arts and demographically inflected place, the Deakin researchers collaborated with local artists with an Indian background on a major performance in late 2019: …

Issue Introduction Volume 10, David Gray

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Issue Introduction and Editorial for Volume 10, Issue 1.