About the Scholarship

A full-time PhD scholarship is available for a First Nations student to study relationships between Cultural Burning and medicinal plants. This is a mixed-methods project to be undertaken among Community and on Native Title Land that is subject to Cultural Burning. This scholarship is part of an ARC funded DECRA project entitled: Narrating the Roles of Animals in Cultural Burning. This project recognises the holistic nature of First Nations land management practices and seeks to produce detailed knowledge of how people, plants and animals co-construct landscapes via the medium of cultural fire.

About the Supervisor

Marcus’ research interests include relations between humans and large carnivores and the new wave of animal domestication in Australia. He is the author of Among the Bone Eaters: Encounters with Hyenas in Harar and Crocodile Undone : The Domestication of Australia’s Fauna.

About the Scholarship

The project undertaken by the successful PhD candidate will be closely aligned with a national ARC-funded Discovery project Understanding and Combatting Dark Political Communication. The research team includes Associate Professor Stephen Harrington (QUT), Professor Kristy Hess (Deakin), Dr Aljosha Schapals (QUT) and Dr Timothy Graham (QUT).

The project is based at Deakin, with support of the project team, and will play an important role in contributing to a comprehensive account of how dark political communication operates, the political figures who exploit it and understand how it is undermining our democracy. It also aims to consider the role of public interest journalism in helping to limit its impact. To achieve this, we will:

1. Create a detailed conceptual framework and language through which to understand and describe DPC.
2. Provide a comprehensive account of communication tactics being used in DPC, evaluate the impact of these tactics on democratic institutions, and examine their influence on political discourse and public policy.
3. Develop practical recommendations for professional journalists on how their practice can best respond to the DPC paradigm, and help to limit its negative effects.

About the Scholarship

About the Scholarship

This PhD supports research funded as part of an ARC Discovery Indigenous Project titled ‘The Great Exhibitions and their Lost Indigenous Objects’, led by Prof. Gaye Sculthorpe of Deakin University. Other researchers involved in this project include Flinders University, the Australian National University, the University of Tasmania and the University of Queensland. Overseas research partners include the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and the Musee du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris. The project is also seeking a PhD candidate for research based at Flinders University, supervised by Prof. Penny Edmonds to investigate Aboriginal representations from South Australia and the Northern Territory within Australian exhibitions up to 1939. This research is partially funded by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council.

About the Scholarship

This PhD supports research funded as part of an ARC Discovery Early Career Award, led by Dr Virginie Rey of Deakin University, entitled, Muslim Museums: Curating Islam in Multicultural Societies. This project seeks a PhD candidate for research based at Deakin University, supervised by Dr Virginie Rey, to investigate Islamic Collections in Australian Museums.

The project aims to develop a social history of Islamic collections in Australia from the 19^th century to present day. It will look at collection development and the representations of Islam/Muslim art/heritage and material culture in Australian museums and compare this with how objects and people from the Islamic World were collected and exhibited elsewhere, in Europe and in North America, for example. The candidate will have the opportunity to research relevant objects in museum collections and archives in several states of Australia. Overall, it will contribute to finding significant objects in collections and telling new stories of Islamic collections and Australia.

About the Scholarship

The project is titled ‘Analysing and disrupting outlaw motorcycle gangs in Australia: A mixed-methods network study’ and has been funded by the Australian Research Council under the Discovery Project scheme.

Crimes committed by Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (OMCGs) cause significant social and economic harm for Australian and international communities. However, little is currently known about co-offending by members of OMCGs. This project will shed light on co-offending within and between OMCG clubs, document changes over time, and develop more effective policies and practices to disrupt OMCG crime. The project will contribute to making Australia safer from the harms of criminal activities undertaken by OMCGs and position Australia as a global leader in the field of criminal networks and methodologies to prevent and disrupt related crime.

The project is a mixed-methods design integrating quantitative and qualitative analyses and will proceed in five phases:

1. Collection of crime data and subsequent coding and cleaning;
2. Cross sectional social network analyses;
3. Interviews with ex-OMCG members and key informants from law enforcement agencies;
4. Dynamic social network modelling and disruption strategies, and
5. Focus groups and workshop.

About the Project

This scholarship is for a candidate seeking to pursue a practice-based PhD in creative writing, focussing on popular fiction in a genre such as fantasy, historical fiction, YA, or romance (other genres will also be considered). The recipient will conduct a PhD project that explores medievalism in popular fictions construct identities and embed ideologies. The project will consider:

• What identities and ideologies are embedded in current convention in the chosen genre
• How subverting or otherwise changing conventions can change identities and ideologies encoded in the text

The focus will be global medievalism, that is, drawing inspiration from the Middle Ages in regions such Oceania, Asia, Africa, the Americas and/or networks and movements between different regions, rather than principally or exclusively from medieval Europe. The successful candidate will design the project within this framework in consultation with the supervisory team.

About the Scholarship

About the Scholarship

The PhD candidate will work with Prof Ihsan Yilmaz and Dr Nicholas Morieson to conduct research on Turkish diaspora groups in Australia with a focus on their use of cyberspace.

The candidate is strongly encouraged to consider the relationship between offline and online environments.

The student will work towards completing a PhD thesis to investigate the main features of the political mobilization through digital technologies among the Turkey-originated diaspora groups in Australia.

Some of the aims of the thesis project are listed below but the student is not limited to these suggestions:

• How these diaspora groups use digital and streaming media.
• Assess the impact of online platforms, streaming media and digital technologies on the Turkey-originated diasporic communities in Australia in terms of inter-group conflict and social cohesion.

Applicants must meet Deakin’s PhD entry requirements, be enrolling full time and hold an Honours degree (First Class) or an equivalent standard Master’s degree with a substantial research component. Please refer to the entry pathways to higher degrees by research for further information.

About the Supervisors

Professor Ihsan Yilmaz

Ihsan Yilmaz is Research Professor and Chair of Islamic Studies and Intercultural Dialogue at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI), Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.

He has conducted research on nation-building; citizenship; authoritarianism; populism; transnationalism; ethnic-religious-political identities and their securitisation (Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia); minority-majority relations (Australia, Turkey, the UK and the USA); socio-legal affairs, identities, belonging and political participation of Muslim minorities in the West (the UK, Australia, and the USA); Islam-state-society relations in majority and minority contexts; global Islamic movements; political Islam in a comparative perspective; Turkish politics; Turkish diasporas (the UK, Australia, the USA); transnationalism; intergroup contact (Australia); and politics of victimhood (Australia, Turkey).

He was professor of political science at Istanbul Fatih University (2008-2016), casual lecturer in law, social sciences and politics at SOAS, University of London (2001-2008) where he taught “Islamic Law and Society”, “Legal Systems of Asia and Africa” and “Turkish Politics” at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Before SOAS, he was a fellow at Center for Islamic Studies, University of Oxford (1999-2001) where he worked on Muslim political participation in the UK and unofficial Muslim laws of young Muslims in the West.

Dr Nicholas Morieson

Dr Nicholas Morieson is an Associate Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation.

How to Apply

Please email a CV and cover letter to Professor Ihsan Yilmaz. The CV should highlight your skills, education, publications and relevant work experience. If you are successful you will then be invited to submit a formal application.