The ACPH has an active postgraduate research program. Below is a list of our current postgraduate students and their areas of research.

Natalie Behjan

Supervisors: Jacquie Lorber-Kasunic and Abby Mellick Lopes
Study area: visualising climate change, environmental politics, sustainable graphic design, design studies, design research

In spite of the contribution of visual language and storyelling, the role of images in communicating climate change have been overlooked and discussion of the agency of the image in environmental politics, largely missing. This project seeks to address this gap by answering the question: what is the role of visual communication in climate activism?

Lachlan McDaniel

Supervisors: Larissa Behrendt and Anna Clark
Study area: Wiradjuri cultural revitalisation

As with many indigenous people across the world, the colonial experience of the Wiradjuri people led to a significant disruption to their culture and self-determination.  In fact, the impact of colonisation on the Wiradjuri language was so profound that a PhD student was unable to find a fluent speaker of the Wiradjuri language whilst collecting data in 1980. Three and a half decades later, the disruption Wiradjuri people have experienced from elements of their culture has not only stopped in relation to some practices, it is actually being reversed through a process of ‘Wiradjuri cultural revitalisation.’ This thesis explores how and why Wiradjuri people are revitalising cultural practices by documenting the revitalisation processes they have followed and their motivations for doing so. The thesis then critically analyses the significance of these processes and the impact they are having on Wiradjuri people’s wellbeing and socio-political status.

Genevieve Murray

Supervisors: Heidi Norman and Anna Clark
Study area: Urban planning

My thesis examines the ways Aboriginal people in the urban context are shaping the planning of their city. With reference to two key recent moments, I argue planning processes in NSW are being re-configured by Aboriginal actors and agents. Two key strategic frameworks and policy outcomes - The Aboriginal SEPP (2019) and the draft Connecting with Country framework (2020) offer fundamentally different logics for understanding planning in the urban context of Greater Sydney. The Aboriginal SEPP, an innovation supporting the objectives of the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act (1983), is intended to deliver development pathways on Aboriginal owned land. The draft Connecting with Country framework offers practical guidance, from an Aboriginal perspective (GANSW, 2020), on how built-environment professionals can address the legislative requirements of the amended EP&A 1979, namely “to promote the sustainable management of built and cultural heritage (including Aboriginal cultural heritage)” (EP&A Act 1979).  

 
Unpublished material and anecdotal evidence suggest these two instruments are already working to re-configure the language, governance structures and processes of the built environment disciplines. This research examines how these instruments are impacting Aboriginal people, planning processes, and the built environment disciplines, along with who and what has agency, and power, in these processes.

Louise Edwards

Supervisor: Anna Clark and Tamson Pietsch
Study area: History; legacy making

I am curious about learning in the broadest philosophical sense, about how the theory of public pedagogies can build meaningful connection between people. I see great power in how individuals, groups and communities interpret and construct narratives around the past, whether it be around material culture, oral traditions or family memories, to define who they are and what they represent.

Sam Twyford-Moore

Supervisor: Anna Clark and Rachel Landers
Study area: Sydney's film history

I found the lack of a centralised Film Museum in Sydney to present a strange void. Sydney has substantial existing infrastructure to mount revival screenings and encourage public engagement with Film History – across festivals, art galleries, universities, and commercially run independent cinemas – but it has not, to date, invested a space solely dedicated to such retrospective, history-focused programming. Collections and archives were dispersed and disparate, and repertory programs were often left to commercial entities.

Catherine Freyne

Supervisor: Anna Clark
Study area: History of sexuality; history of the family; family memoir

I am studying the historical intersection of private lives and public discourses about homosexuality and the family, in a non-traditional PhD project which draws on my own family’s experience. The working title is The family as closet: Gay married men in Australia, 1950–2000.

Sue Hodges

Supervisor: Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton
Study area: Heritage interpretation

My PhD project looks at the economic, social and cultural value of heritage interpretation, with the aims of repositioning heritage as a sector that creates value across all areas of society.