Doctoral Academy

The Melbourne Social Equity Institute's Doctoral Academy began in 2014. For each cohort, the Institute selects research higher degree students from across the University of Melbourne to share their research, knowledge and ideas on social equity issues.

The Doctoral Academy aims to support students through peer-learning opportunities and mentoring from experienced academics. Membership of the academy will expose doctoral students to different disciplinary perspectives and research methodologies that can inform the development of their own research.

Topics covered include:

• Community-engaged and participatory research methods
• The benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary research
• Working with Government
• Careers for researchers outside academia

The 2022 Doctoral Academy ran as a four-day hybrid intensive, running from Monday 21 to Thursday 24 February in person at the Parkville campus and online.

2022

• Loren Adams
  Project: Socio-spatial exploits: a critical anthology of urban heists, hacks, hijacks, and copycats
• Georgia Burn
  Project: Investigating a theoretical framework for Communication Access that supports social inclusion for people with communication disability
• Philippa Duell-Piening
  Project: The right to be counted for people with disabilities who are refugees or from refugee backgrounds
• Vrinda Edan
  Project: What is the experience of consumers who have an advance statement and a compulsory inpatient admission
• Zali Fung
  Project: Control and contests over water and the Nam Yuam water diversion project in Northwest Thailand
• Annisa Sabrina Hartoto
  Project: The gender dimensions of conflict: understanding the role of women in transforming local dynamics of conflict in Indonesia
• Helen Henderson
  Project: Beliefs, understanding and access to male family planning in Timor-Leste
• Kirsten Hillman
  Project: Exploring the space of music, music therapy and trauma in the adult mental health context
• Samuel Holleran
  Project: Cemeteries as civic spaces: public participation in the planning of urban burial sites
• Micheline Lee
  Project: Disability, law and all that romance: a cross-disciplinary approach to equality rights for people with disabilities
• Odette Mazel
  Project: Queer jurisprudence: LGBTIQ+ perspectives on law, difference, and radicalism after marriage equality in Australia
• Helena Roennfeldt
  Project: Crossing the threshold: a study of the lived experiences of people in mental health crisis who have accessed mental health crisis care
• Rachael Sabrinskas
  Project: A qualitative exploration of lived experience of attempted suicide by hanging to inform the current prevention agenda
• Anna Scovelle
  Project: Gender equality and the gendered division of labour in Australia: an exploration of the impact on sleep
• Puneeta Thakur
  Project:  Pursuit of happiness for wheeled power mobility device users in urban public spaces:  producing an evidence-informed model
• Melissa Willoughby
  Project: Preventing violence-related deaths and morbidity among people who have had contact with the criminal justice system
• Rana Zahroh
  Project:  Caesarean birth in Indonesia: understanding inequalities, inefficiencies and intentionalities

2020

• Rebecca Bunn
  Project: Advocacy strategies in post-release contexts: how NGOs advocate on behalf of people leaving prison
• Bethia Burgess
  Project: Rethinking post-conflict justice in Myanmar: addressing structural harms through community-based projects
• Nadia Degregori
  Project: This is (not) over: The socio-environmental legacy of large-scale mine closure
• Chabel Charles Din Khan
  Project: Precarious risks: the governance of 'at risk' and 'vulnerable' welfare populations
• Isabel Fangyi Lu
  Project: Digital placemaking and public participation: planning, programming and governance of urban public spaces
• Rewa Marathe
  Project: Crowdsourcing safety: examining the role of digital women’s safety audits in shaping feminist advocacy for women’s ‘right to the city’
• Erika Martino
  Project: From shelter to security: improving the quality and quantity of long-term affordable housing for survivors of intimate partner violence
• Margaret Josephine McCarthy
  Project: Morality and justice associated with everyday living in urban landscapes in times of climate change
• Lubna Meempatta
  Project: Modelling the interactions in decision-making by irrigators, irrigation water supply authorities and environmental water managers
• Jacqui Parncutt
  Project: Who cares? The lives and trajectories of Australian carers with disability
• Karina Putri
  Project: Urban planning and the search for social justice in the global south: lessons from resettlement planning practice in Jakarta
• Pia Treichel
  Project: The political economy of international climate finance: justice, adaptation, and the Green Climate Fund
• Franka Vaughan
  Project: Who is a Liberian anyway? The claim for formalised identity by diasporic Liberians

2018

• Louisa Bufardeci
  Project: There's brown in beige: towards an aesthetic language to challenge whiteness
• Matthew Mitchell
  Project: Judging gender: the legal recognition and regulation of transgender children
• Alicia Yon
  Project: Access, participation and inclusion: the gender/disability/violence nexus and the role of integrated planning policy in addressing the right to services
• Sri Pallavi Nadimpalli
  Project: Examining spaces of belonging for migrant Indian women in 'Global Cities'
• Ronny Andrade
  Project: Echolocation as a means for people with visual impairment to build mental maps and explore virtual environments
• Teresa Hall
  Project: Investigating 'people-centred' mental health care in Timor-Leste
• Ainslee Meredith
  Project: Access to conservation: determinants, contemporary practice, and future policy design
• Maya Ercole
  Project: Exploring older adults' experiences of ageing in residential care homes through dramatherapy
• Claudine Lam
  Project: Counter narratives from the field: the lived experience of early childhood educators of colour
• Diana Langmead
  Project: An exclusive school and an inclusive rule: the mediation of equity policy by an elite school in India
• Juan Jose Tellez
  Project: Mending the patchwork: human rights and the regulation of chemical restraint in Australian health settings
• Carol O'Dwyer
  Project: Staff's experiences of providing gender-sensitive care in acute psychiatric units to women who have experienced sexual violence
• Sally Marsden
  Project: The VOICE project: voices of women and psychologists for a domestic violence counselling framework
• Tess Toumbourou
  Project: Exploring the gender dimensions of an oil palm land deal in East Kalimantan, Indonesia

2016

• Zoe Aitken
  Project: How does acquiring a disability in adulthood affect people's mental health?
• Tamara Borovica
  Project: Becomings of moving bodies: young women, bodies and affect
• Tania Cañas
  Project: Theatre of the oppressed and conscientisation
• Angeline Ferdinand
  Project: Transferring international models of Aboriginal-centred health care to Australian settings
• Anna Dabrowski
  Project: Imagining global citizenship: policy, curricula and the role of the teacher
• Rebecca Fairchild
  Project: Collaborating with children in the homelessness and family violence context to understand the significance of music in their everyday lives
• Sarah Green
  Project: A safe and necessary coherence: the experiences of Bosnian child refugees in Australia
• Thea Hewitt
  Project: Locating the city of refuge: institutional support for humanitarian migrants in Melbourne, Australia
• Kelly Hutchinson
  Project: Social impact of technology: digital social innovation in Australia
• Hesam Kamalipour
  Project: Urban informalogy: the morphologies and incremental transformations of informal settlements
• Lauren Kosta
  Project: Parenting after a disaster: experiences since Black Saturday
• Ingrid Landau
  Project: Contextualising or constructing compliance? The rise of human rights due diligence and its implications for the protection of workers' rights in the global economy
• Matthew Mabefam
  Project: Witchcraft and development in Africa: a case study of northern Ghana
• Frankline A. Ndi
  Project: Land grabbing and community resettlement within the context of development projects in southwest Cameroon
• Renee Miller-Yeaman
  Project: Home, hospitality and confinement: the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre and Migrant Hostel
• Emily Porter
  Project: Youth labour market transitions during the Great Recession: assessing the role of institutions
• Amita Tuteja
  Project: Understanding the needs of migrants from Burma: reproductive health and contraception in the Australian healthcare context

2015

• Kari Gibson
  Project: Climate change, coping and psychological distress in Tuvalu
• Liz Gill-Atkinson
  Project: How do women with disability in the Philippines understand and experience participatory research practice?
• Kelvin Lau
  Project: Understanding mental distress in young people from a migrant background in Australia through photo-interviewing
• Maureen Murphy
  Project: Local food environments for a healthy equitable city: evidence to inform urban planning policy and governance in Melbourne, Australia
• Melissa Murphy
  Project: From social connectedness to equitable access: A participatory action research illuminating the ways in which young people with disability can engage with music opportunities and the barriers that prevent them doing so
• Hannah Robertson
  Project: Resilient Remote Settlements: Analysing the role and potential of buildings to satisfy human needs in very remote settlements
• Elly Scrine
  Project: Exploring relational competencies in music therapy group improvisation for people with borderline personality disorder
• Nathaniel Swain
  Project: Speech-language pathology intervention for young offenders

2014

• Ashrafalsadat Hosseini
  Project: Migration experience, resilience and psychological outcomes: an exploratory study of Iranian immigrants in Australia
• Caroline Phillips
  Project: Materialising feminism: object and interval
• Cherry Hense
  Project: Musical identities of young people recovering from mental illness
• Cristina Aziz Dos Santos
  Project: Inequality of learning opportunity: the location effect in the Chilean municipalized school choice system
• David Henry
  Project: Creating space to talk: cultural organisations, community engagement and intercultural dialogue
• Elizabeth McLindon
  Project: It happens to clinicians too: intimate partner, family and sexual violence amongst health professionals
• Emily Cheesman
  Project: Children's rights-based approaches to policies, services and programmes for Filipino street children
• Gemma McKibbin
  Project: "I knew it was wrong but I couldn't stop it": young people talk about the prevention of sexually abusive behaviour
• Haslina Hashim
  Project: Linking the past to the present: housing history and the sense of home in temporary public rental housing in Sarawak
• Hayley Henderson
  Project: Integrated planning with social logics in Melbourne and Buenos Aires
• Kelum Palipane
  Project: Towards a multimodal production of urban space: exploring the role of socio-sensory knowledge in design for urban renewal
• Lily O'Neill
  Project: A tale of two agreements: negotiating Aboriginal land access agreements in Australia's natural gas industry
• Luke Heemsbergen
  Project: Radical transparency in democratic governing: democracy unbound within a networked society?
• Melinda Herron
  Project: Reconfiguring racism: youthful dynamics of conflict and conviviality in a culturally diverse, working-class high school
• Sara Ciesielski
  Project: Language development and socialisation in Sherpa
• Sophie Rudolph
  Project: Racing the gap: a critical analysis of Australian Indigenous education policy discourse and its political effects

Applications for the 2022 Doctoral Academy closed at  12pm midday on Tuesday 31 August 2021. The details below are for information purposes only.

TIME COMMITMENT

The 2021 Doctoral Academy is scheduled to be conducted as a four-day spring intensive, running from Monday 21 to Thursday 24 February 2022 in person at the Parkville campus. There will be daily workshops between 10am and 3pm (with a break for lunch).

It is not a requirement that members are present for every session. However, regular participation is expected and candidates should only apply if they can attend at least 80% of the program.

A modest stipend will be available for people accepted to the Doctoral Academy who having caring responsibilities to help cover costs associated with participating in the program (eg childcare).

SELECTION CRITERIA

Applicants must be enrolled at the University of Melbourne and are expected to have completed their doctoral confirmation process.

Applications will be reviewed by the Melbourne Social Equity Institute executive staff, who will assess the applications against the following criteria:

• Does the applicant’s research project address social equity issues?
• Has the applicant demonstrated an interest in working across disciplines?

In determining successful applications, the Institute will seek to bring together a mix of students from a diverse range of disciplines.

Students who have participated in a previous Institute Doctoral Academy are ineligible.

APPLICATION PROCESS

Applicants are asked to provide the following information via an online form. We strongly recommend that you prepare your answers offline (in Microsoft Word or similar) and save a copy for your own records.

Students who have been allocated an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship through the  Melbourne Social Equity Institute qualify for automatic entry into the academy once they have completed confirmation. These students should still complete the application form but letters of support and a CV are not required.

• Name, enrolment and contact information
• Thesis title
• Confirmation and expected completion dates
• Principal supervisor's name and contact information
• Co-supervisor's name and contact information (if applicable)
• Research Summary
  Please provide a brief summary of your research thesis and key research questions (up to 200 words)
• Personal Statement
  Please tell us in up to 200 words or less:
  (a) why you would like to become a member of the academy;
  (b) any further information about yourself and your research interests not covered elsewhere
• A current CV (upload attachment)
• A letter of support from your supervisor, indicating their support for your participation in the program if accepted (upload attachment – a copy of an email is sufficient)

RESEARCHING FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

This compilation of working papers written by the 2014 Doctoral Academy cohort reflects critically on the process of researching for social change and the dilemmas and challenges of that work. Edited by Cherry Hense, Gemma McKibbin, Julie McLeod, Caroline Phillips and Sophie Rudolph.

If you have any questions about the Doctoral Academy, please contact social-equity@unimelb.edu.au.

To be notified when applications for the next Doctoral Academy open, please subscribe to our email newsletter using your University of Melbourne email address.