Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences

Rosita Henry

Adjunct Professor
rosita.henry@jcu.edu.au

Michael Ackland

Adjunct Professor
michael.ackland@jcu.edu.au

Roger Osborne

Roderick Associate Professor of English Literature
roger.osborne@jcu.edu.au

Claire Hansen

Adjunct Senior Lecturer
claire.hansen3@jcu.edu.au

Zoe Wang

Senior Lecturer, Development Studies
zoe.wang@jcu.edu.au

Karen Cheer

Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
karen.cheer@jcu.edu.au

Katherine Woo

Adjunct Research Fellow
katherine.woo@jcu.edu.au

Michele Barnes

Adjunct Associate Professor
michele.barnes@jcu.edu.au

Maddy McAllister

Senior Lecturer, Maritime Archaeology
madeline.mcallister@jcu.edu.au

Improving food security in the northern uplands of Lao PDR: Identifying drivers and overcoming barriers (Old ID 21945)

Simon Foale

01 Jul 2014 - 06 Oct 2019

Despite strong economic growth in the last decade, food insecurity in Lao PDR remains high (around 22%) and more or less unchanged. The drivers of food insecurity are largely unknown. This project asks: 1) What are the past drivers, and current constraints and enhancers, of food security status, and 2) What are the impacts of interventions to address food insecurity, in the Northern Uplands of Lao PDR? The project will use a variety of mixed methods to produce an analysis of household strategies towards income generation and stabilisation under a range of market conditions.

Tropical Rainforest in Expedition Journals

Elizabeth Smyth

31 Jul 2025 - 26 Apr 2026

This proposal is to conduct a comparative analysis of Ellis Rowan’s memoir The Flower Hunter: The adventures, in Northern Australia and New Zealand, of flower painter Ellis Rowan (1898) about her experience of visiting tropical rainforest in Queensland, Australia, with the journals of two people who travelled through the forests of the Congo in 1908 and 1909. This will allow consideration and analysis of perspectives of tropical rainforest in two countries in a comparable era. The latter journals are held in the Smithsonian libraries of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and the National Museum of African Art (NMAfA). They are: A.B. Rendle, E.G. Baker and S. LeM. Moore’s An account of the plants collected by the Ruwenzori Expedition (1910) and M. W. Hilton-Simpson’s Land and peoples of the Kasai being a narrative of a two years’ journey among the cannibals of the equatorial forest and other savage tribes of the south-western Congo (1911). A third journal is M. W. Hilton-Simpson’s Journal of the Congo expedition: Containing narrative of the journey, personal notes, geographical notes (1909), which is available as a digital resource, a format that will enable me to begin my research before travelling. This project is designed to build on a major grant application submitted in March through the Australian Research Council to study rainforest representation in Australian fiction and life writing. The Smithsonian proposal does this by expanding the scope internationally. Should the DECRA be successful, this Fellowship would coincide with and support the literature review phase of that project.

Success and failure in climate (im)mobility policy solutions around the Indo-Pacific

Liam Moore

30 Jun 2025 - 30 Jun 2027

There is a prescient and ongoing need to better understand the drivers, patterns, and required support structures for people, households, and communities engaging with decisions around climate-related (im)mobilities. What we also know is that in these spaces of climate and disaster governance, preparation is exponentially more cost-effective than rapid response. We propose two key activities to manage the problem of understanding success and failure in climate policy possibility solutions in the Indo-Pacific. The first aspect is developing a baseline of climate (im)mobility policy solutions. This would involve developing a typology of climate (im)mobilities policy clusters to both highlight the diversity of mobility types that exist within this broad governance area and provide clarity towards what policy and practice should focus on for improved outcomes for people and communities. The second aspect of this project extends beyond its academic research-based roots to share the findings with policymakers and practitioners across the region. Therefore, we will directly engage with key stakeholders, sharing policy-focused interpretations of the findings and opening up a dialogue to understand the barriers to putting in place the practices we argue for. After these consultations, we will progress to a short, impactful monograph that brings together the academic and the practical to express both the state of climate mobilities governance across Oceania and where the field is heading in the future.

Advancing analytical techniques and research capacity in bioarchaeology in Southeast Asia

Anna Willis

01 Jun 2025 - 31 Dec 2025

Biological sex determination of human skeletal remains is fundamental for building an accurate biological profile for individuals from archaeological and forensic contexts. This project aims to determine the biological sex of 85 infants and children from an Iron Age site in Thailand using a new method that targets a sex-specific peptide in tooth enamel. This would enable examination of sex-based patterns in disease and mortality during infancy and childhood. The project will be bring together a team of MCRs from JCU and Thai researchers, mentored by Lead-CI, Domett, to build research capacity and soft diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region, aiming to submit an ARC Discovery Project Grant.

LabNorth: Building Cultural Capacity and Strategic Alliances for ARC Linkage Success

Rohan Lloyd

01 Jun 2025 - 31 Dec 2025

Funding is sought to expand the network and research of LabNorth, a Roderick-funded research initiative focusing on bolstering the key arts and culture infrastructure and practice in Northern Australia (and including researchers from JCU, CDU and Flinders Uni). Funds are sought to bring together key stakeholders to a two-day workshop at the end of July to build strategic relationships and explore common challenges and opportunities in supporting arts and culture in the North.