Our Research Strengths

Interdisciplinary research that engages with public culture

The Australian Centre has national and international recognition for its interdisciplinary research on Australian society in its global context. The Centre has substantial funding for its research from the prestigious Australian Research Council.

We define our principal research focus as an engagement with public culture through investigation of the creative, historical, political and social dimensions which give depth to contemporary issues.

By "public culture" we refer to how meaning and ideas arise and circulate in the public sphere, and the ways that historical and contemporary differences in Australian society are represented as public phenomena. Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary approaches, we are researching themes such as how cultural identities are shaped by and against the global forces which bear upon Australia's place in the world, and how "race", ethnicity, gender and sexuality are contested in our public narratives.

Under this general rubric, but not limited by it, staff at the Australian Centre are conducting research projects on themes such as:

• Memory, life-narrative and belonging
• Migration, ethnicity, exclusion and marginality
• National identity, community and place
• Histories of poverty and welfare
• The arts and creative production
• Indigenous and non-indigenous relations
• Sexuality and gender
• Media and cultural economy

Staff at the Australian Centre are well qualified to support postgraduate research students in the practice of innovative research. In addition, a number of students are being jointly supervised with other departments, drawing upon the expertise of researchers across the University, in fields as diverse as history, cultural studies, visual arts, urban planning, politics, architecture and musicology.