What's New 2008

Fellowship Award

Associate Professor Lenore Lyons, Director of CAPSTRANS at the University of Wollongong was recently awarded a Research Fellowship under the Australia-Netherlands Exchange Scheme (Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)) to spend time at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in Amsterdam and Leiden.

Grant Successes!

• Lenore Lyons (CAPSTRANS), Michele Ford (University of Sydney), Willem van Schendel (University of Amsterdam) and Riwanto Tirtosudarmo (LIPI, Indonesia) received funding from the Australia-Netherlands Research Collaboration Scheme to hold a workshop titled “Labour Migration and Trafficking: Policy Making at the Border” ($41,504).
• Paul Sharrad (CAPSTRANS) and Stewart Firth (ANU) received funding from the Asia-Pacific Futures Research Network (APFRN) to hold a workshop titled “Writing the Pacific: Postgraduate Workshop” ($9,000).
• Brian Yecies (CAPSTRANS) received a 2008-2009 Korea Foundation (KF) Advanced Research Grant for a project titled "Korean Cinema Outside Looking In: Understanding the New "Golden" Age of Post-Burden Cinema" (US$20,353). Brian will spend 3 months of field research in the US, China and Korea as part of his grant.
• Wenche Ommundsen received funding from the Asia-Pacific Futures Research Network (APFRN) to hold a workshop titled “Asia Pacific Transculturalisms: New Theoretical Perspectives” ($8,000).

International students in the Asia Pacific: Mobility, migration, wellbeing and security (13-15 February 2008)

Academics from Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and across Australia recently participated in a conference on international students and global student mobility organized by CAPSTRANS staff member, Associate Professor Peter Kell. The forum has been funded by the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS) at UOW and the Asia Pacific Research Futures Network (APRFN). Participants presented papers on the wellbeing and mobility of international students in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and East Timor as well as in Australia. Some of the papers dealt with controversial issues in off-shore education programs, cross-cultural postgraduate research supervision, plagiarism, the stereotyping of international students, students as vulnerable workers and life transitions from student to migrant. The papers will make up a special edition of the International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies.

More Information >>

CAPSTRANS members to attend Doctoral Workshop in South Africa

Georgia Lysaght and Susan Engel have been selected to attend the Doctoral Workshop on Development & International Organisations in Cape Town South Africa from 7 June. The workshop has been organised by the World Bank, World Trade Organization, and the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

ARC Discovery successes 2008

• Linda Connor, Glenn Albrecht and Nick Higginbotham. “Climate change, place and community: An ethnographic study of the Hunter Valley, NSW”. ARC Discovery Project (2008-2011). ($422,000)
• Sara Dolnicar, Lenore Lyons, Simon Ville “The role of community connectedness in retaining skilled migrant women in Australia”. ARC Linkage-Project Round 2. (2007-2008).  ($38,440).
• Mark McLelland. “Global/Local Intersections: History, Identity and Community in a Tokyo Subculture”, ARC Discovery (2008-2010).
• Andrew Lattas “Government, Religion and the Problem of Moral Order in Contemporary Papua New Guinea”. (2008 – 2011). ($202,808).
• Wenche Ommundsen and Paul Sharrad. “Globalising Australian literature: Asian‑Australian writing, Asian perspectives on Australian literature”, ARC Discovery Project (2008-2010).

Latest research efforts of our staff:

Dr Christine de Matos “Aussies who aren’t Aussies”, The Australian, 29 January 2008

Associate Professor Peter Kell “Confronting a sticky wicket”, Daily Telegraph, 23 January 2008