Grants & Opportunities

Dandhigu yimbana: Listening on Country for social-emotional wellbeing. Dandhigu yimbana are Gunggari words used to acknowledge the impact and different meanings of listening on Country for First Nations peoples. This project is implemented by community-based and academic Indigenous researchers, engaged in promoting social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) through deep active listening practices. It will contribute to reforms at the cultural interface of Indigenous health and arts-based research and extend international evidence of the strong contribution of the arts in promoting wellbeing and health equity and in enhancing research quality and impact. It uses Arts and Indigenous research methods to understand the relationship between the wellbeing of Country and people mediated through listening practices.. Scheme: Discovery Indigenous. Field: 4501 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture, Language and History. Lead: Dr Vicki Saunders

Transforming Cultural & Natural Resource Management workforce capabilities. This project aims to implement a transformative program of transdisciplinary cultural and natural resource management and workforce development research in Northern Australia’s Arnhem Plateau region. This project expects to create new knowledge in the areas of cultural knowledges, wildfire, feral animal, invasive plants, mine-site rehabilitation, and climate change, as well as Indigenous training effectiveness. Expected outcomes of the project include practical learnings for application in broader Indigenous community/First Nations capability and supportive policy development contexts. The expected benefits are a long-term platform for enhancing cultural and environmental landscape management and sustainable employment opportunities.. Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0502 - Environmental Science and Management. Lead: Prof Jeremy Russell-Smith

Where we belong: Connecting Indigenous identity and well-being in the city. This project aims to address a critical knowledge gap about the lived experience of well-being for urban/sub-urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This project intends to provide an empirical understanding of the importance of identity and belonging for well-being from an Indigenous standpoint. Expected outcomes of this project include an in-depth, holistic, and place-based understanding of Indigenous-determined pathways to living well in the city and identifying community-based policy opportunities. This project has the potential to contribute to significant social and cultural benefits, such as improving Indigenous community well-being, healing intergenerational trauma, and promoting social cohesion and reconciliation.. Scheme: Discovery Indigenous. Field: 4504 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and Wellbeing. Lead: Dr Sarah Bourke

Designing peacemaking programs with First Nations languages and communities. This project aims to examine mediation, negotiation and peacemaking processes in First Nations communities, and the language practices that underpin them. Working under First Nations governance, the project expects to generate new knowledge about how these practices are being sustained, and how are they being adapted to contemporary community- and school-based contexts. The expected outcome is an improved understanding of peacemaking practices in First Nations communities and how they are supported by linguistic practices. The project will provide significant benefits by advancing the design and facilitation of culturally responsive peacemaking processes and improving cross-cultural mediation and negotiation programs.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4501 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture, Language and History. Lead: Dr James Bednall

Redesigning apartment policy standards for health and wellbeing. This project aims to examine the impact of apartment design standards on residents’ health and wellbeing. It seeks to (1) identify a refined set of evidence-informed quantifiable policy standards that protect residents’ health and wellbeing; and (2) evaluate their uptake by industry and barriers to implementation. Many design standards are based on intuition and experience rather than empirical evidence, and little is known about whether the standards and thresholds stipulated are sufficient to support health. Expected outcomes include tailored policy-specific recommendations for design policy and the planning of apartment precincts. Benefits include the delivery of convivial, equitable, healthy and sustainable apartment housing.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 1205 - Urban and Regional Planning. Lead: Dr Sarah Foster

Understanding nutritional interactions for targeted microbiome manipulation. This project aims to identify how microbial communities, known as microbiomes, can be effectively manipulated to the benefit of their host. Microbiome manipulation has been in the spotlight as a potential solution to maintain or improve the health of several hosts, from threatened coral species to livestock and humans, but the development of industry-scale strategies has been slow. This project proposes to chart the nutritional interactions among microorganisms and to identify cascade effects of microbiome manipulation. This will generate fundamental knowledge on the biological processes underlying community stability and malleability, which will ultimately help engineering optimised microbiomes.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 0605 - Microbiology. Lead: Dr Vanessa Rossetto Marcelino

Pursuing Public Health in The Preindustrial World, 1100-1800. This project aims to recover community-health practices in three world regions before the takeoff of European industrialization. It challenges a common chronology and geography in public health history by examining how especially non-urban societies in Europe, the Middle East and India adjusted their behaviors and environments to manage health risks, often relying on the principles of humoral (or Galenic) medicine. A multidisciplinary team will conduct spatial, material, pictorial and text-based analyses, which will collectively extricate public health from Eurocentric narratives of modernization and illuminate preventative-medical cultures often ignored or studied in isolation.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 2202 - History and Philosophy of Specific Fields. Lead: Prof Dr Guy Geltner

Remote sensing of biotic stress with hyperspectral-fluorescence imaging. This project aims to investigate new indicators of crop biotic stress using innovative airborne remote sensing and imaging spectroscopy for biosecurity applications. Current satellites used to monitor crops and forests do not meet the spectral and spatial details that are required for the early -previsual- detection of biotic and abiotic stress. Accordingly, this project's significance focuses on new insights to detect the alteration of photosynthetic indicators of plant functioning, building on recent breakthroughs with airborne hyperspectral imaging and remote sensing technologies. The outcomes will provide significant benefits to Australia in the detection of harmful diseases and improved water and nutrient monitoring methods.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 0909 - Geomatic Engineering. Lead: Dr Pangzhen Zhang

Bluebottle dynamics: towards a prediction tool for Surf Life Saving Aust. Many Australians have had a painful bluebottle sting, yet little is known about bluebottles and what brings them to the coast. This project will shed new light on bluebottle dynamics, pathways, and distribution of the beachings. We will use an innovative combination of lab work, ocean surveys, statistical and hydrodynamic modelling to fill knowledge gaps and ultimately provide the framework for prediction. In partnership with Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA), we will develop the first bluebottle risk prediction tool for our popular beaches. Forewarned is forearmed. Forecasts will help mitigate bluebottle stings, lessen their public health burden, while having broad benefits for coastal communities. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 0405 - Oceanography. Lead: A/Prof Amandine Schaeffer

Tackling Crystal Methamphetamine Supply in Rural and Regional Australia. This project tackles one of the leading drug policy and organised crime issues in Australia, namely the increased availability of crystal methamphetamine (ice) in rural and regional communities. The first study of its kind nationally, it will use an innovative combination of qualitative and quantitative methods across six communities in three states to uncover how ice infiltrates regional communities, the drivers and mechanisms and impacts thereof. Expected outcomes include a roadmap to reduce supply and harms, strengthened communities and enhanced international collaborations. With ice use and supply costing the Australian government $5 billion per year, the project stands to provide significant social, public health and economic benefits.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4402 - Criminology. Lead: A/Prof Caitlin Hughes

Supporting the sustainability of Australia's local news ecosystem. This project aims to understand how Australia’s main public broadcaster, the ABC, can best support public interest journalism in rural and regional communities, with a specific focus on fragile and underserved areas of the nation’s local news ecosystem. The project will develop new knowledge around media power and how news providers can work together to secure the sustainability of local news. Expected outcomes include a framework to identify and define areas of news need, an assessment of existing interventions and road-tested approaches to improve information quality. The project should provide benefits by supporting forms of local journalism that ultimately enhances the demographic health and social fabric of small towns and cities. . Scheme: Linkage Projects. Field: 4701 - Communication and Media Studies. Lead: Prof Kristy Hess

On the wealth of First Nations: Examining the Indigenous-settler wealth gap. This project aims to revise understandings of First Nations economic circumstances by investigating disparities between First Nations and non-Indigenous financial wealth. It expects to generate knowledge of the size of the ‘wealth gap’ and identify the structures that cause its contemporary reproduction and analyse policy options to address these disparities. Expected outcomes of the project include new knowledge about the Indigenous-settler wealth gap and the development of a research literature on approaches to addressing the wealth gap in Australia. This should provide significant benefits including a clearer understanding of the nature and causes of economic disparities between First Nations and non-Indigenous people in Australia.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4406 - Human Geography. Lead: Dr Francis Markham

The Great Exhibitions and their Lost Indigenous Objects . This project will rediscover the Australian Indigenous objects sent overseas to the Great Exhibitions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such objects acted as powerful forms of cultural, political and economic display, and a form of imperial and colonial projection. It will excavate the hidden histories of Indigenous people involved in these events and the many objects lost to Australia. Through collaborative work at community dialogues, the project will repatriate knowledge and remake connections between objects, museums, and Indigenous people. In doing so, it will bring contemporary Indigenous perspectives to global attention, generate new exhibition possibilities and influence international museum practice.. Scheme: Discovery Indigenous. Field: 4501 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture, Language and History. Lead: Prof Gaye Sculthorpe

The Ethics of Voluntary Assisted Dying: Promoting Constructive Debate. This project aims to analyze core concepts that play key roles in emerging debates about the ethics of Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) in Australia. The project expects to make constructive contributions to these debates, promoting respectful dialogue and reducing polarization. Expected outcomes include a new model for managing VAD in Australia which is ethically appropriate and consistent with community values. This model will also benefit other countries where the ethics of VAD is under consideration. The project will promote the dignity and autonomy of all and ensure that issues about the conscientious refusal of healthcare professionals to participate in the provision of VAD are handled in an ethically appropriate and effective manner.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 5001 - Applied Ethics. Lead: Prof Stephen Clarke

Consumer and Community Involvement Process Implementation Model . The project aims to examine the barriers and enablers to Consumer and Community Involvement. We will generate new knowledge via innovative methods from narrative medicine and economic and marketing studies including establishing the first Community of Practice for consumers and stakeholders in dementia research as the example. The outcomes include the creation of a process implementation model for Consumer and Community Involvement to inform policies and guidelines for research systems and funding. This process model will propel research forward and generate opportunities to maximise the health and social benefits of research, including significant translation of research into practice. . Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4407 - Policy and Administration. Lead: A/Prof Darshini Ayton

Decision support for climate-adapted bushfire risk mitigation. As climate change intensifies bushfire risks, there is an urgent need for fire management tools that remain effective in a warming world. This project aims to optimise the delivery of current risk mitigation tools and identify pathways to develop new tools across fuel management, suppression and community engagement. This research is expected to generate new knowledge to support climate-adapted bushfire risk mitigation across multiple, sometimes competing values. The project goal is to transform the capacity of the country’s leading fire agencies to embed climate change into their decision-making, setting a global standard for climate-adapted fire management and leading to improved outcomes for human health, the economy and the environment.. Scheme: Mid-Career Industry Fellowships. Field: 4104 - Environmental Management. Lead: A/Prof Hamish Clarke

Community-Led Approaches to Teaching Australian South Sea Islander History. This project argues that a new approach to teaching Australian South Sea Islander history in primary and secondary school education is urgently needed to address conditions by which Australian South Sea Islander students are made disadvantaged at school. Through a Tok Stori methodological approach that draws on community knowledges, this project will develop new ways of teaching Australian South Sea Islander history. It will work towards implementing the kind of meaningful progress that failed to follow the 1993 Recognition, build transnational research links, and increase and strengthen the capacity of Australian South Sea Islander educators and researchers. . Scheme: Discovery Indigenous. Field: 4513 - Pacific Peoples Culture, Language and History. Lead: Dr Francis Bobongie-Harris

Mind bender: how neuroactive drug pollution impacts wildlife cognition. This Project aims to investigate how widespread contamination by neuroactive drugs affects wildlife cognition and survival, and thus, the ecological communities they inhabit. It expects to generate new mechanistic insights into the emerging threat of pharmaceutical pollution across different scales of ecological complexity, from controlled laboratory experimentation to studies in the wild. Expected outcomes include new knowledge of direct relevance to chemical risk assessment and regulation. Findings should contribute significantly to understanding how wildlife respond to palpable environmental hazards, and enhance the evidence base for managing and securing biodiversity and vulnerable water resources—both in Australia and globally.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3103 - Ecology. Lead: Prof Bob Wong

Transforming gene testing to make communities safe. Waterborne pathogens pose a significant public health threat globally, leading to adverse health impacts and high prevention costs. This Fellowship will support the development and future commercialisation of a new gene testing technology for such pathogens based on programmable nucleases. While these nucleases are known for precise gene editing, we discovered their potential for ultrasensitive biosensing. Driven by innovative biochemistry, the new method promises to be faster than conventional gene-based tests, offering a highly accurate (>99%) and scalable alternative to lab-based diagnostics at lower cost. In collaboration with the Key Industry Partner, we will faciliate market entry of the new tests and train an industry-ready team.. Scheme: Industry Laureate Fellowships. Field: 3101 - Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Lead: Prof Ewa Goldys

Malnuda Burra Yina: Gabra Stories of Yorta Yorta Fruit Picking. This project will investigate the role played by Yorta Yorta people in the Goulburn Valley fruit picking industry. Utilising family/clan led research, it is intended to advance our understanding of the history of Australian capitalism by applying Aboriginal modalities. The project will show how Yorta Yorta families practiced self-determination through their choice of labour and employer from the 1920s to the 1970s. Its outcomes are multifaceted, prioritising community aspirations to document their contribution to the economy. The project should provide significant social, cultural and commercial benefits by generating greater knowledge of Yorta Yorta fruit picking in the Goulburn Valley region and beyond. . Scheme: Discovery Indigenous. Field: 4519 - Other Indigenous Data, Methodologies and Global Indigenous Studies. Lead: Prof Julie Andrews

Aboriginal Health Equity: culturally safe care and child development . The Aboriginal Health Equity Futures study will be the first longitudinal cohort study to examine and quantify culturally safe care impacts on Aboriginal children's developmental trajectories. Integrated prospectively collected and linked administrative data will establish if children (0-5 years) benefit from maternal exposure to culturally safe perinatal care practices. Building on prior studies, the quantitative design within an Indigenous research framework will provide a novel platform for a comprehensive analysis of wellbeing inequalities in the early life course. The study is critical to sustain culturally responsive maternity care and for health policies and practice which support Closing the Gap targets for future generations.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 4504 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and Wellbeing. Lead: Prof Rhonda Marriott

Improving Teacher Retention in High-Turnover Areas: A Geo-Spatial Approach. This project aims to improve teacher retention in high-turnover areas by developing a Workforce Distribution Dashboard to map teacher employment patterns and identify Teacher Exodus Zones in VIC, NSW, and QLD. It expects to generate new knowledge about successful retention practices through geo-spatial analysis and case studies of schools achieving high retention under challenging conditions. Expected outcomes include a scalable strategic framework for teacher retention, showcasing successful practices and providing actionable insights for policymakers and schools. This project will significantly benefit rural, remote, and disadvantaged communities by addressing workforce shortages and supporting sustainable, data-driven workforce planning.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3902 - Education Policy, Sociology and Philosophy. Lead: A/Prof Babak Dadvand

Harnessing animal intelligence to repair Australian mammal communities . This project aims to address Australia’s extinction crisis by testing how predation shapes prey intelligence and using this new information to restore threatened mammal populations. This project aspires to determine which cognitive traits influence the development of antipredator behaviour and hence promote survival alongside predators. By exploring the role of predation in shaping learning and memory, this project will return only the most ‘predator smart’ prey to the wild, testing a model that could facilitate the co-existence of native prey alongside introduced predators. Expected outcomes include a new understanding of how predation shapes the brain and practical cognition-based conservation tools to reduce extinction risk.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4104 - Environmental Management. Lead: Dr Eamonn Wooster

Building Deep Debate Evidence Systems for Youth Crime Policy Reform. This project aims to develop a reliable, equitable, and explainable deep evidence system to contribute to global debates on youth crime policy. This project expects to enhance transparency and fairness, aligned with Australian justice priorities, by mitigating bias and misinformation and ensuring legislative changes are backed by diversified evidence. Expected outcomes include AI-driven recommendations from scientific studies, public discourse, and social media via data engineering and data science. This should provide significant benefits to policymakers and communities promoting fairer justice reforms and strengthening Australia’s leadership in data governance by ensuring policy decisions are based on comprehensive, verifiable evidence.. Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4605 - Data Management and Data Science. Lead: Dr Thanh Tam Nguyen

Enhancing Social Prescribing. The project aims to enable the integration, long-term adoption, and scalability of social prescribing into Australia’s social system. Social prescribing links people to non-medical services and supports to improve their wellbeing and quality of life. The program will co-design evidence-based infrastructure to support long-term adoption and scalability. Expected outcomes include a secure data hub, enhanced evidence-based social prescribing programs to enable optimised resource allocation, and improved consistency of social services. Given the established cost-effectiveness of social prescribing, significant anticipated benefits include reduced welfare and economic burdens, as well as increased social connection and community wellbeing. . Scheme: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. Field: 4409 - Social Work. Lead: Dr Rosanne Freak-Poli