Australia’s role in an increasingly tense international power struggle in the Asia Pacific has become the target of new research by Griffith University’s Associate Professor Kai He.
The aim of the project is to provide insights for Australian policymakers so that they may conduct sensible and effective Asia policy in the 21st century.
“Since the Cold War ended we have seen the emergence of multilateral institutions such as APEC, ASEAN Regional Forum and East Asia Summit, providing a peaceful influence in the Asia Pacific.” said Associate Professor He.
“However, since 2000 there has been a major institutional shift, in which middle and great powers have utilised existing multilateral institutions, or initiated new ones, to drive their agenda. I called this phenomenon ‘multilateralism 2.0 in the Asia Pacific’.
New type of power struggle
“It’s a power struggle, but I would argue it’s a new type of power struggle and in the future we will see more institutional struggles to compete for influence and dominance in multilateral institutions.
“At the moment, Australia is facing a hard decision in light of strategic competition between the United States and China, especially on the maritime and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
“On the one hand it causes a lot of tension in the region and on the other it also provides an opportunity for Australia.
“What I plan with this latest study is to develop research to test the hypothesis that Australia can play an active role in mediating the US-China competition through multilateral institutions.
“Hopefully this can lead to policy recommendations to help policymakers to choose a proper strategy to play a positive role in constructing the future regional security architecture.”
Associate Professor He said that through in-depth theoretical and empirical case studies, this project will explore when states are more likely to rely upon rule-based institutions or to use power-based strategies, such as alliance formation, to pursue security in world politics.
“While it is well known that paternal incarceration severely affect children’s psycho-social and behavioural outcomes, heightening risks for chronic offending, there is little research on maternal incarceration,’’ says lead researcher Associate Professor Susan Dennison.
“As mothers are central to children’s developmental outcomes the impacts of their incarceration should mirror those of paternal incarceration, but we do not fully understand how maternal incarceration shapes children’s short and long-term life outcomes.
“At least half of the 2800 female prisoners in Australia are mothers and even if one child from each mother turns to chronic offending, the justice and welfare system costs to Australian taxpayers would be upwards of $336 million”.
Children’s sole caregivers
“Incarcerated mothers are often their children’s sole caregivers and the majority of children are displaced from their homes at some point during maternal incarceration.”
The study will determine how maternal incarceration affects children’s (aged 6-17) psychological and social development and related behavioural outcomes.
“This means their emotional regulation and coping skills, self-control, level of cognitive and social competence, family bonds, attachment to mother, peer attachment, school engagement and performance and externalising problems such as antisocial and offending behaviour,’’ Associate Professor Dennison said.
Researchers will interview imprisoned mothers, their children and caregivers in Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory. The study will also include a comparison group of children from non-incarcerated, offending mothers from similar backgrounds.
The study will consider the specific challenges for Indigenous mothers in prison, their children and caregivers in urban, regional and remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
The project will inform policies and programs to support children’s positive development. It will also lay the foundation for a longitudinal study on the enduring effects of maternal incarceration on the children in this study.
A Griffith University-led team will examine the scope and quality of Australian social work research to determine its effectiveness and ways to improve the quality of services in child protection, disability and aged care.
With new funding of $261,500 received from the Australian Research Council, the Griffith-led team will examine the scope and quality of Australian social work research in these service areas and assess how this research is used and its effect on generating innovation.
The work will assess how research is used and its effect on generating innovation. The project received funding of $261,500 from the Australian Research Council and is being undertaken in collaboration with La Trobe University, Southern Cross University and the UK’s University of Bedfordshire.
“Research and development is vital in the human services, as it is in all industries. We see that the human services industry is vital to many people’s quality of life but that it lacks innovation and struggles to demonstrate its effectiveness,” says research leader Professor Clare Tilburyfrom Griffith’s School of Human Services and Social Work.
“Human services agencies lack access to original research to expand thinking about the nature of social problems, and crucially for social work, how to effectively respond to social disadvantage.
Inadequate family support
“Despite enormous investment, there are still huge areas of unmet need, with indicators revealing persistent levels of poverty, insufficient support for people with disabilities, and inadequate family support.
“A step change in the breadth, depth and quality of social work research will go a long way towards improving the quality and effectiveness of services.”
Professor Tilbury says the study aims to develop strategies to advance the production, uptake and effect of social work research.
“We know that there are many challenges relating to evidence-based practice, and there are also more deep-seated challenges about the research foundations of the human services sector.
“There are many types of research that are essential to moving practice forward. We need to increase understanding of the generative factors of social problems including life course, location and gender perspectives, implementation barriers such as structural and organisational prerequisites for embedding quality practice and programs, and approaches such as cohort studies, dropout studies and prevalence studies.”
The research program aims to undertake a systematic quantitative review of social work research outputs, investigate the perspectives of research end-users such as policy makers and practitioners; refine methods for evaluating impact and innovation, and develop strategies for advancing research with leading Australian social work researchers.
The study will be conducted over three years 2017-2019.
Protection of the Gold Coast’s beaches and coastal zones have been given a $600,000 boost from an Australian Research Council grant making it the focal point for national beach management strategies.
Lead investigator Professor Rodger Tomlinson, Director of the Griffith Centre for Coastal Management, said the funding would allow for specialist equipment to be installed on the Gold Coast to better understand the big picture of weather events, climate change and manmade structures and how they impacted on cities.
“The Gold Coast has some of the best data sets in the country but there are still major gaps in the understanding of coastal processes, including the effects of climate variability and change,” said Professor Tomlinson.
“This will help decision-makers to reduce the risk to coastal communities, coastal ecosystems and maritime operations from extreme storms, climate change, infrastructure development and urbanisation.
“It also opens the door for a national collaboration to understand these coastal processes along the eastern seaboard.”
Validating computer modelling
The data will be used to validate computer modelling, which in turn will help state and local authorities with planning and protection of man made assets and infrastructure.
The funding is expected to cover the cost of about 20 pieces of equipment, to be deployed into the coastal ocean out to about 50 metres in depth, which will measure waves, tides, currents, seabed and beach profiles and sediment characteristics.
The ARC funded Coastal Engineering Research Field Station Project’s partners include Griffith University, the Gold Coast Waterways Authority, University of Queensland and the University of Newcastle.
“So much is happening in the coastal zone whether it be ocean outfalls, beach nourishment programs or coastal protection structures, that we need to collect a coherent data set of those processes so that we can understand it,” said Professor Tomlinson
“This leads back into better models and decision making. It’s fundamental research about coastal behaviour.”
The information will assist the Gold Coast Waterways Authority, which controls the sand bypassing system and management of the Gold Coast Seaway as well as navigation.
“Some of the modules are mobile and can be moved to other locations, so it becomes a national facility,” said Professor Tomlinson.
Good management of coastal zones
“This infrastructure will really support good management of our coastal zones but equally gives us some fundamental information from a research point of view.
“It’s focussed here on the Gold Coast because there is a government waverider buoy out there which give us wave measurements and Gold Coast Waterways Authority has the sandpumping jetty at The Spit, which is a fantastic platform to establish a base station and communication hub.”
The management team will include Professor Tomlinson, Professor Tom Baldock of University of Queensland and Mr Brian McRae of the Gold Coast Waterways Authority.
Professor Tomlinson is also behind a 50-year plan designed for the City of Gold Coast to protect the beaches, people and economy of the Gold Coast.
His research and development of 77 recommendations underpin the Gold Coast Shoreline Management Plan for the sustainable management and enhancement of the city’s 52km of beaches.
The research field station project’s project is funded under the 2017 Linkage Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities grants administered by the Australian Research Council.
Griffith University researcher Associate Professor Adam Brumm’s quest to find the origins of Homo floresiensis, the enigmatic ‘hobbits’ of Flores, Indonesia, has been given a significant boost through a prestigious Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council.
“Sulawesi could be the key to understanding the origin of Homo floresiensis,” Associate Professor Brumm said.
“We think that this remote island was the stepping stone for the initial hominin colonisation of Flores from Asia at least a million years ago. There are as-yet untapped fossil riches on Sulawesi that may reveal vital clues about the evolutionary history of this remarkable human species.”
In January this year Associate Professor Brumm and team announced the unearthing of ancient stone tools on Sulawesi that long pre-date the arrival of Homo sapiens on that island, providing the first indication that this landmass was once home to an archaic and presently unidentified group of hominins.
In June, they also described the results of their intensive excavations on Flores, including the discovery of 700,000-year-old fossils from tiny hominins that may represent ancestors of Homo floresiensis.
“Through my Future Fellowship I will launch similarly large-scale fossil digs on Sulawesi, which has not been done before, to increase our chances of uncovering elusive hominin remains, including, hopefully, fossils of whichever species it was that gave rise to the Flores hobbits,” said Associate Professor Brumm.
Following on the heels of the recent Griffith-led discovery that Sulawesi harbours some of the oldest rock art on the planet, Associate Professor Brumm will also excavate cave sites across the island in search of further evidence for the symbolic culture of Sulawesi’s earliest ‘modern’ human colonists.
He also aims to determine whether the first Homo sapiens to reach Sulawesi overlapped with archaic hominins.
Complex human evolution in Asia
“In recent years we have come to realise how complex human evolution in Asia really was, and spectacularly so,” Associate Professor Brumm said.
“New branches of the human family tree have materialised on the basis of fossil discoveries in Southeast Asia, and we know from ancient DNA breakthroughs that there was extensive genetic intermingling between our species and extinct forms of humans.
“It is crucial to determine whether the people who made the 40,000-year-old Ice Age art on Sulawesi arrived to find this island devoid of human life, or if, as was perhaps the case on Flores, they entered an environment that was still inhabited by a distinct hominin species.”
Recent discoveries show that ancestors of modern-day Aboriginal Australians met and interbred with at least one mystery lineage of earlier hominins (Denisovans) somewhere in far eastern Asia, and quite possibly in island Indonesia, prior to reaching our shores at least 50,000 years ago.
“It might have been on Sulawesi where our species first came face-to-face with distant evolutionary kin who had been shut off in tropical Asia for many hundreds of millennia,” Associate Professor Brumm said. “If so, that will be a truly spectacular discovery.”
Another two Griffith University researchers working in the fields of human origins have also been successful in the latest round of Australian Research Council grants.
Dr Julien Louys has secured a $652,000 Future Fellowship for a project that aims to test whether humans moving through Southeast Asia used a savannah corridor, facilitating their migrations into Sumatra and Java. It also aims to examine the effect of rainforests on human movements and evolution.
These results are expected to provide a new understanding of the environmental context of human evolution in Asia, and identify routes ancient people took as they moved south through Asia and into Australia.
Origins of Australia’s non-Pama-Nyungan speaking people
Griffith University’s Professor David Lambert, heading a team of international researchers, has been granted $533,000 under the ARC Discovery Projects scheme to explore the origins of Australia’s non-Pama-Nyungan speaking people.
This project aims to test the likelihood of multiple migrations into Australia before European arrival and determine if the phylogenetic relationships among non-Pama-Nyungan languages is mirrored by their speakers’ genomic phylogenetic relationships.
The non-Pama-Nyungan First People of Australia speak an extraordinary number and diversity of Aboriginal languages, but the origins of these languages and the genomic diversity of the people who speak them are only now starting to be understood.
The research team comprises Dr Michael Westaway, Dr Erich Round, Professor Eske Willerslev, Associate Professor Craig Millar, Associate Professor Claire Bowern and Professor Russell Gray.
The work is being conducted in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, The University of Auckland, The University of Queensland, University of Copenhagen and Yale University.
Griffith University has received more than $11 million for new research projects, as part of the Australian Research Council’s major grants for 2017.
The grants were announced by the Federal Education Minister, Simon Birmingham, this morning.
Research into the origins of the human race, the geo-political security of the Asia-Pacific and the impact of climate change and development on our coastlines are among 30projects to receive funding.
Many of the Griffith projects involve collaboration with researchers at the world’s most prestigious universities, including Oxford University, Yale, Columbia, The University of California, Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute.
The grants confirm Griffith’s position among Australia’s leading research-focused universities, and is recognition of the work being done at Griffith to foster the next generation of top researchers.
Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) Professor Ned Pankhurst said the funding would support world-class research at Griffith.
“Our success in securing this funding recognises the researchers at Griffith and the impact of their work in tackling the most pressing issues facing humanity in the 21st century,” he said.
“As a result of this new funding, a whole range of research projects will get off the ground in areas such as science, engineering, criminology, international politics and sociology.
“This remarkable research will advance humankind.”
Strong research culture
Professor Pankhurst said Griffith had developed a strong research culture over the past decade.
“This drives our commitment to higher learning and boosts our capacity to attract the world’s leading researchers across a range of disciplines.”
Griffith University has received more than double the funding secured last year. Vice Chancellor Professor Ian O’Connor has congratulated all of the grant recipients.
Significant highlights of today’s funding announcement include:
In Griffith’s largest grant, Associate Professor Kai He secured $910,000, to investigate the geo-politics of the Asia-Pacific. This project will help inform Australian foreign policy in the region.
Dr Julian Louys secured $652,000 to identify the land routes used by ancient people as they moved through Asia to Australia, using new fossil remains found in Sumatra.
Professor Michael Jennings, from the Institute For Glycomics, receives almost $900,000 in total for two separate projects. One focuses on triggers for reactions of regulators within bacteria and the other looks at interactions between cellular level carbohydrates.
Managers who rule by fear, who lack compassion for staff, or who are totally driven by the bottom line, could find themselves displaced by a new progressive management style.
Change is afoot, infiltrating our daily routines and work practices, and the autocrat may just have fallen foul of a new age.
A rule-by-fear philosophy has influenced, even dominated management techniques across the globe for a generation and more, moulding leaders with a hard edge and a taste for bottom lines.
It may have run its course, according to a leading Brisbane professional and Griffith MBA graduate.
“We have seen an evolution of leadership style,” Susan Rallings, Senior Vice President at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, says.
Leaders and generational change
Emotional intelligence, understanding and empathy are now crucial parts of the modern, progressive business leader’s armoury, she contends.
“It is very important leaders understand the generational changes of the workplace and understand the dynamic nature and innovative nature of employment these days.
“I think collaboration is the way that we’ll succeed and I don’t think you get the best out of people by ruling with fear. I don’t think you get the best out of them by telling them what to do.”
Susan, a recent finalist in the 2016 AFA Female Excellence in Advice Awards, has over 20 years of experience operating at all echelons of Australia’s finance and investment industry.
During that time she has observed, adapted to and instigated change. Now the accelerated pace of change in a 21st century digital economy calls for a willingness and versatility not seen before. She urges business owners, chief executives and industry leaders to take a new responsibility.
“The way we manage and work with individuals, our teams, and our organisations is going to continue to change and we need to continue to change and learn and do things very differently to what we might have done.
“We can’t stand still. We have to be continually evolving and for a lot of leaders I think that’s challenging.
“But responsible leaders will make the changes necessary and will always look at how they can do things better and will encourage their teams to innovate.”
Innovative solutions available
She argues this approach is likely to be an effective means of building productivity among the next generation of emerging professionals.
“They’re very smart, they’re very thoughtful. They don’t want to be told what to do. Yes, they need some boundaries and they need to know what’s required and what the expectations are, but I think they will always come up with more innovative solutions and we need to be able to embrace that.”
Susan Rallings will deliver the keynote address at the Griffith Business School Outstanding Alumnus Awards at the Sofitel Brisbane Central on Friday, November 4, when she will discuss the evolution of education and her own career path.
She was part of the first cohort to study an MBA at Griffith in 1991. She had previously trained as a nurse in a hospital-based environment but had a very different education experience doing an MBA, studying part-time in a university setting.
“I saw it as a great opportunity to expand my own horizons and think about what opportunities might lie ahead of me,” she says.
Exploring uncharted territory
Susan found herself exploring uncharted territory, her bias often challenged by classroom peers from a range of backgrounds with a mix of employment experiences. She learned negotiation skills, cross-cultural skills and benefited professionally from working with different types of teams.
She recalls, also, how she was encouraged to “dig a bit deeper” by lecturers whose depth of knowledge and interest in the students helped make the experience so worthwhile.
“I’ve always strived to learn new ways of doing things, to seek new pathways and to improve the leadership that we have within the industry and within the organisations that I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of.”
She has implemented this approach to her work in financial services through the years, endeavouring to address confusion and misconceptions about the industry in the wider community. Empowering the disadvantaged, isolated and those heavily dependent on others has been an abiding priority.
“The reason I got into the financial services industry was to help people understand the choices that they have.
“When I sit down with my clients it’s about how I help them identify or meet their goals and objectives.
“For a lot of them it’s not necessarily about the money it’s about the choices that that money allows them to have. It’s about helping them understand what their legacies are going to be.”
Queensland College of Artfashiondesign students will create one-off illustrations of the Fashionson the Field at Eagle Farm Racecourse on Melbourne Cup Day.
“In the age of the selfie, where everyone is a photographer, people are rediscovering the art offashionillustration,” he said.
“It allows you to exaggerate the moment and create an idea that is larger than life.
“This is a great opportunity for our students to get front and centre at afashionevent and capture the magic.”
Fashion takes centre stage on Melbourne Cup Day
Brisbane Racing Club CEO Dave Whimpey said fashion played a major role at the Spring Carnival.
“On Melbourne Cup Day, fashion is certainly at its finest with racegoers all overBrisbaneputting their personal touch to their outfit on the day,” he said.
“The Spring Carnival is about so much more than justracing— on Melbourne Cup Day, fashion is at its finest.
“Eagle Farm Racecourse is delighted to have budding fashion designers and artists at the track to capture the city’s most stylish racegoers.”
Design students up for the challenge
Griffith University fashion student Charlotte Balfour is among the group of students selected to sketch this year’s Fashions on the Field, and says she is looking forward to the challenge.
“I think there is a real sense of occasion at the races — people take their ensembles to a whole new level with the headpieces and accessories,” she said.
“Fashion illustration is a great way to capture all of the unique details and bring some of the history and culture of fashion to the racetrack.”
Forging industry connections
Industry collaborations are a key focus of the Queensland College of Art — and a drawcard for students.
Aspiring designer Jenny Chiang is in her first year of the Bachelor of Digital Media at the QCA, and said the project was a way to build industry connections.
“This is a great opportunity to meet people in the fashion industry, see new ideas and check out the latest trends,” she said.
Ever wanted to do your bit to contribute to the environment and threatened species research? Citizen science allows you to do just that.
This coming Sunday, October 30, marks the seventh year of the Glossy Black-Cockatoo Birding Day, an initiative of the Glossy Black Conservancy.
Griffith researchers say the initiative will help them better understand the distribution patterns, habitat use and population performance of the Glossy Black-Cockatoo.
Griffith School of Environment’s Dr Guy Castley said the Glossy Black-Cockatoo, or scientifically known as Calyptorhynchus lathami lathami, is distributed throughout south-eastern Queensland and New South Wales and is listed as vulnerable in both states.
The Glossy Black-Cockatoo Birding Day documents sightings of the species across SEQ and north-eastern NSW from dawn to dusk to provide a snapshot of the distribution but also provide insights into the population structure.
“With the assistance of volunteers, this Birding Day will enable us to build a picture over time of the numbers, distribution and social structure of these birds,” Dr Castley said.
“By combining these data with sightings reported at other times, through the Conservancy’s online reporting tool, we are better informed to develop effective conservation guidelines for the species.”
Gold Coast residents will be out and about from Pimpama to Currumbin, and from the coast to the hinterland in search of these somewhat elusive birds.
Any records from the Gold Coast are then combined with those from other regions to provide a snapshot of where these cockatoo were seen on the day.
Last year nearly 200 volunteers spent the day searching for the Glossy Black-Cockatoo in ten regional council areas but only recorded 60 birds. While numbers in 2015 were the lowest since the surveys commenced in 2010 there is considerable variability in the annual counts.
Members of the public who have not yet signed up and are interested in participating on the day should contact the regional coordinator of the event in their area to get further information. Regional coordinator details can be obtained via the Glossy Black Conservancy website.
Dr Castley said the Glossy Black-Cockatoo species was cryptic in its behaviour and use of natural habitats but also has quite specific habitat requirements.
“It is a fussy eater, feeding only on the cones of certain species of she-oak trees. It also needs tree hollows for nesting and visiting watering holes to drink each afternoon.”
Not unlike Julia Gillard — Australia’s first female Prime Minister – Hillary Clinton has faced gender mockery during the course of the US Presidential Election campaign.
She has been criticised for her voice, her laugh, her shrillness, her emotions and her clothes.
She has been accused of not having a presidential look. This is true, but the United States has never had a woman president before. Apart from Barack Obama, the presidential look has been middle-aged, white male concept.
The way she dresses is a case in point. She talks about what she calls “the sisterhood of her travelling pantsuit”. This is Hillary’s way of owning a uniform when she on stage in a debate, when she’s travelling from state to state, when she’s in front of the cameras.
She has to think about this in ways male candidates have never had to think during an election campaign. She needs to wear something that’s flattering, that inspires confidence but which also gives her a sense of power.
Gender dominates debates
At the same time, everything she wears is subject to analysis from strong or weak colours to sleeves and lines. She has to consider every detail whereas men just wear a suit.
Therefore, she has had to invent her own look and image as a presidential candidate while also dealing with challenging issues around her husband, the Clinton Foundation, her email controversy, her elitism, and the deal she has done with the banks.
In many ways gender became the primary issue of the three presidential debates, which was quite problematic for Clinton.
If she had gone in hard and aggressive with Trump, she would have been criticised for being overbearing or hysterical. If she was angry and screamed as Trump has done, the media would have portrayed her as a scolding mother as they did in 2008 after a debate with Obama during the contest for the Democratic nomination.
But if she had let Trump talk over the top of her, she would have looked submissive. If she rose above him, according to Michelle Obama’s ‘when they go low, you go higher’ mantra, she would appear weak.
Trump’s use of gender
Ironically, Trump has used gender much more than Clinton during the debates where he has asserted a real male-dominant role. He has loomed large, almost stalking her, coming across as bullying, blustering, domineering with an attitude of ‘When I’m president, I can do whatever I want’.
What has come through is the image of a stalking man who is an insecure bigot and a racist, and I suspect his gender card has backfired.
Clinton has been supportive and outspoken on policies around the gender-based pay gap, the need for paid family leave, raising the minimum wage, more affordable childcare and the Paycheck Fairness Act.
But when she talks about these things, she is accused of playing the gender card.
Clinton and feminism
She has managed to ramp up her appeal to women almost by default because of Trump’s sexism. His treatment of women has been her trump card, and allowed her to use her feminism without having to push it too far.
At the end of the day, however, I’m not convinced the United States is ready or willing to vote for a woman. The idea of a first woman president is now an aside with so much focus on Trump, on his sexism, on his outlandish and unpredictable comments.
Ultimately, Hillary Clinton is very fortunate because Trump has become his own worst enemy. If she was running against a more conventional Republican, she would now be in a lot of trouble at this point.
