Enabler success 2023

Outcomes: Jo-Anne Britt was employed for $500 as an RA on this project. Kate Jaskolski was employed for $1500 as an RA on this project. These tasks involve lit review work, conducting interviews and analysis of data.

Shelley has presented in person on this project at INSEA’s World Congress of Art Education in Turkiye. She received feedback at this conference, which has helped her, Katie and Jo to develop the paper further. This paper was reviewed by Prof. Vaughan Prain, and we are currently working on addressing these changes.

$ 2,000 was granted for Research Assistance.

$3,000 was granted for copy editing.

Outcomes: This funding enabled copyediting of all chapters to the compiled edited book by Paula Muraca. The final version of this manuscript (revised after peer review) is to be submitted on 14 Dec 2023, and the book released in the first half of 2024. The acknowledgements section of the book includes acknowledgement of the Centre’s contribution to the final copyediting of the book, as well as acknowledgement of the work of Paula Muraca.

Project summary: This project forms the first part of a larger study aimed at the creation of multimedia resources to support the development of ecologically just human and more-than-human entanglements and ways of relating with/in and across species that challenge the human-animal and human-nature binaries. This scoping review of current literature – both academic and grey reporting on the intersection of CDS and CAS will build upon this growing interdisciplinary field to guide the development and subsequent piloting of a range of multimedia resources that refuse the Humanist supremacy implicit in the larger project of Modernity to generate knowledge, tools and embodied practices for inclusive, beyond anthropocentric living.

This project was funded $2750.

Outcomes: With the enabler grant funds gratefully received, I recruited Austin McBride as a casual research assistant to undertake the literature review relevant to the topic. As an interdisciplinary investigation, there was a wealth of established and emerging literature relevant to the review, including several full-length single-authored monographs and edited collections, but fewer peer-reviewed journal articles. Very few of these were published in education-focused journals. Most of the materials located and reviewed were from the Humanities and Posthumanities, including the emerging field of Critical Animal Studies. Scholars from these fields, while explicit in identifying the harm done to animals through the speciesism inherent in Modernist Humanism, did not often think in coterminous ways, for example, by considering the experiences of animals-as-disabling and the treatment of disabled people-as-animals, despite both groups being subjectified by an ableist speciesism central to Modern Man (sic). The literature located from Disability Studies and Critical Disability Studies indicated that authors from these fields had been conceptualising relational conjunctions between the treatment of (some) disabled people and/as animals, particularly domesticated and factory farmed animals, more deeply and over a longer period than colleagues in the Humanities. Unfortunately, as a novice research manager, I under-estimated the time it would take Austin to identify relevant literature, read, summarise, synthesise and report the findings relevant to our focus. So, by the time the grant funds were fully acquitted in November 2023, we had completed the literature review itself, but had only just begun the work of drafting the journal article based upon our findings. This publication had been listed as an outcome in our enabler proposal. I will apply for a second CRF Enabler Grant to finalise this draft and submit it for publication in the Australian Journal of Environmental Education, as originally pitched.  We (Austin and I) will also use the funds, if granted, as the basis for an invited symposium at this year’s (2024) AARE Conference. We are convinced, following this literature review, that this interdisciplinary space provides significant scope for the development of inclusive and sustainable intra- and interspecies relationships and pedagogies, and of the role that educators can play in nourishing these regenerated futures.

Funded amount: $2453.00

Outcomes: The Research Assistant and I have spent considerable time working through, and discussing a quite challenging High Risk Ethics application. We are currently tying up loose ends and hope to submit when the ethics committee returns mid January. However, there have been difficulties pinning down my co-researcher from The University of Melbourne (Professor Keith McVilly). I finally managed to pin Keith down this morning, and so we have the extra information we needed to go ahead.

This project was funded $2750.

Outcomes: Alongside research assistant Beth Arnold, I have developed a large database that compiles information including links, articles, documents, and references documenting best practice in creative practice disciplines. Throughout the research we have worked closely with the Climate Aware Creative Practice Network (CACP), a newly established network of academics from a broad range of creative practice disciplines who joined forces to generate a united response to the climate emergency within higher education and the creative arts sector. We have consulted CACP to steer the research and analyse what is required for our sector both from the broader industry-based perspective (individual creative practitioners working in the field) as well as their application to (Deakin) Undergraduate pedagogy and practices.

We have created a large database that captures a broad range of current guidelines and benchmarks that exist around creative practice in relation to the climate emergency/climate awareness with a focus on material use.

We have focussed on what information is available to creative practice/institutions/staff and students about materials/art matter such as: what it is/composition, lifespan, impact on climate, best practice, safety, environmental impact, sources, energy, waste, decision making, transportation, origin.

We have also collected guidelines that currently exist for other industries, such as food and fashion, to see what and how information about materials (their makeup, origin, and climate impact) is collected and communicated.

Funded amount: $2680.00. All funding was spent on salary for Dr Rosie Shorter across 5 days of work.

Outcomes: Following the literature review, we identified three overlapping areas of investigation within the space of sensitive research:

• Researcher self-care
• Ethical research from a feminist, decolonisation lens and the ethics review process
• Supervision of PhD/ECRs, and training for PhD/ECRS

Relevant literature and research for each of the above areas has been filed and retained for further use. Alongside this, a policy analysis was conducted in order to better understand what measures are currently in place to protect researchers. The policy analysis considered both internal guidelines (such as DUHREC’s procedures), and national-based funding bodies (such as the ARC). In both instances, policies did not effectively capture or discuss measures that researchers could implement to ensure self-care when undertaking sensitive research.

Funded amount: $1000 AUD

Project summary: I am beginning a project with a growing group of international scholars from the UK and the Caribbean. This project will explore the experiences of colonisation at the centre and the periphery of
the old British Empire. This project will also explore decolonial praxis in the centre and the periphery of the Empire and compare and contrast the processes. We seek to learn as much as we can of our shared struggles and to find common ground with which to support decolonial praxis globally.

Outcomes: The Centre for Regenerative Futures generously funded part of a visiting scholar exchange that I negotiated with my colleague Dr. Kendi Guantai from the University of Leeds. She came to visit Deakin University for a week over November in 2023 and the centre provided funding to hire a care to provide transportation between Deakin campuses and to travel around Victoria to important sites. The centre was also generous and provided an honorarium for Kendi to present at a Future Forum where we learned about her work in the UK with students and the application of Ubunu philosophy to inform pedagogical practices and challenge neo-colonial hegemonic education contexts in the classroom.