Past ICS Projects

This project reconsiders Australia's oft-remarked sporting 'obsession' in this dynamic context and its implications for cultural citizenship in the construction of (trans)national identities and affinities.

Media literacy is the ability to critically engage with media in all aspects of life. It is a form of lifelong literacy that is essential for full participation in society. This project will undertake Australia’s first national survey of adults’ media literacy values, needs, capabilities, skills and knowledge.

This ethnographic investigation explores the complex relationship between digital and social inclusion, and social infrastructure's role (education facilities, charities, government services) in supporting low-income families' social and economic participation.

This project responds to changes in the production, experience and consumption of news media by young Australians.

This project aims to investigate the stability of single older women's senses of home, security and belonging as they negotiate asset and income insecurity. It examines: how national and housing provider scale housing policy and governance frameworks shape the ways that older women experience and make decisions about the home; and how the home is affected by housing mobility.

This postdoctoral fellowship investigates the potential of a group of traders and producers of processed food goods to act as drivers of plastic-free asset-based community development in Hanchey, Cambodia.

This project aims to investigate how the Antarctic 'gateway cities' of Hobart, Australia; Christchurch, New Zealand; and Punta Arenas, Chile might reimagine and intensify their relations to the continent and each other.

This project examines the way in which mobile media platforms and apps are entangled in specific understandings and approaches to racism. A number of 'anti-racism apps' in Australia, the US, France, the UK and Canada are the focus of the research.

The aim of this project is to analyse how logistics produces and connects heterogeneous urban spaces and populations. This allows critical interrogation of traditional approaches to migration (push-pull factors, labour reserve, etc.). It also permits assessment of how logistics industries affect populations beyond their workforces.

The project looks at the social value and economic viability of cooperative housing; the operational costs of cooperatives when carrying out their obligations of regular repairs and maintenance and the possibilities of diversification.

This project focuses on alternatives to electronic air-conditioning to encourage more sustainable urban lifestyles in Southeast Asia. It traces the historical emergence of climate-controlled interiors as spaces through which visions and expectations about national standards of living, comfort, productivity and leisure have coalesced.

There is a pressing need to provide respite during heat waves both in and around the house and in the wider public domain, particularly in common spaces of rest, gathering and transit that span the public and private. This project will review current world best practice on cooling commons spaces.

This project aims to measure digital capacity across four domains: economic, ecological, political, and cultural. It will identify enabling practices that help people connect using digital means, as well as barriers to participation in the digital world.

This project aims to advance understandings of how data centres in Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney are transforming ways of living and working in the Asia Pacific.

Do you think you're human? This project interrogates how the notion of mind has come to shape western attitudes about what it means to be human.

A main goal of the project was to be able to represent the impact that this organisation had on the wellbeing of young people, project staff, volunteers, and the broader community of Christchurch including other area enterprises and the municipal government.

Drawing upon Indigenous and place-based methods, this study will examine how four regional centres navigate the socioeconomic challenges they face with an increasing Indigenous disability population in the context of national reform. The study focuses on Indigenous Australians with disabilities.

Building on their knowledge, their relationship to Country and existing skills, this project will provide opportunities for the rangers to enhance their surveying, analytic and reporting capacities, further expanding their toolkit to document, restore, reclaim and enact their stewardship practices.

This project explores the affective experiences of memorial visitors using methodological innovations that can open up collective experiences of place and related intensities of affect. The research questions are both theoretical and methodological: First, how are affective spaces of thanatourism produced via specific practices, materials and relations? Second, how do we best capture this affective dimension?

The research examines social and civic dimensions such as social bonds, social bridges, social links and rights and responsibilities from the perspectives of refugees.

The project aims to examine the nature of the digital economy in several cities worldwide, with a focus on attempts to emulate the success of Silicon Valley. Secondly, it will chart the growing interest of firms. Thirdly, it will provide a major empirical examination of Australia's digital economy.

This project analyses current practice, drawing on co-designed research activities and products in order to map out possibilities for better engagement. This includes two case studies on cultural burning.

This project is examining the prevalence, locations and trends in homicide linked to commercial night-time leisure, problematic drinking and drug use.

In this research, a “living lab” was created in which young people designed and delivered a three-hour workshop on social networking and cybersafety for adult participants

This project investigates the cultural and social transformations introduced by this emerging economic network. Focusing on three key infrastructural hubs (the ports of Piraeus, Valparaíso and Kolkata), the project will advance understandings of how logistical processes manage labour forces and contribute to global governance.

The aim of this project is to critically evaluate the ABC's changing role in building public value and engagement with animals through the genre of wildlife documentary. For many years wildlife documentary has been seen as quintessential public service content.

Further research is required to gauge refugee students’ experiences of schooling and whether current practice is addressing their needs and those of teachers. This is the aim of the project.

In this project, the Intergener8 Living Lab is supporting the Marina de Valencia to create an experimental research and development ecosystem in which systematic practices of participatory design are applied to reimagine inclusive and innovative public spaces.

This project studies early twentieth-century museums in Australia, Europe, North America, and New Zealand. Examining the relations between anthropological fieldwork, collections and social governance in colonial and metropolitan settings it highlights the roles of museums in culturally diverse societies.

Phase 1 of the project. Researchers: Dr Philippa Collin, Suzan Burton, Kathy Tannous, Ann Dadich

We explore the cultural consequences of economic change among people who have traditionally been categorized as ‘urban poor’. We examine how new industries and new consumer practices are changing the cultural lives of urban poor communities. Alongside new opportunities and new lifestyles, we ask whether new social tensions also emerge when large groups of the former poor have become mass consumers.

This project aims to understand links between recent new public management reforms, particularly in New South Wales, and the operation and capacity of successful urban Aboriginal organisations. The project will include an analysis of case studies from other international jurisdictions (such as New Zealand and Canada).

This project was motivated by public concern regarding the circulation and potential impact of fake news or ‘disinformation’. The project responded to these concerns by designing and implementing the first nationally representative survey to examine young Australians news practices and experiences.

There is an urgent need to identify and promote practices that serve to respectfully offer tent residents long-term, safe accommodation options. This project addresses this need. Specifically, it will learn from the success of the Judges Car Park Penrith and Hawkesbury River projects.

This project aims to provide a comparative analysis of the way Australia's past is constructed and remembered at heritage tourism sites.

Building on the findings of the Mapping Culture report, the second phase of the study, Planning Cultural Creation and Production in Sydney: A Venues and Infrastructure Needs Analysis, will examine the nature and extent of future needs for cultural space in the City, especially spaces for cultural creation and production.

This project aims to promote empowerment and agency to young Australians by developing the concept and practice of 'active citizenship'. This is done by confronting the emerging sense of disempowerment and alienation that many young people feel by developing ongoing work with a cross section of groups that are an important part of the civic landscape.

This project received funding to conduct workshops in Finland, South Korea and Colombia with communities who are building ethical economies. The workshops were designed to allow communities to take a measure of their own economic lives and to make common cause with others by sharing what they’ve learned.

This project documents and analyses changing modes of cultural production and consumption in Australia through a case study of the cultural economy of its most dynamic urban area, Greater Western Sydney.

This project explores the future for manufacturing in Australia in the context of sustainability. Concerned with the wider societal and planetary impacts of conducting business-as-usual, some innovative Australian manufacturers are reorienting their business towards social and environmental sustainability.

This project aims to shed light on the challenges posed by increasing cultural complexity in schools and their communities. It is examining approaches to multiculturalism in NSW government schools in urban and rural areas and how these link to the role of education in promoting social inclusion.

The project aims to create a digital knowledge exchange portal to foster collaboration and networks, encouraging arts and culture leaders and academics in Australia and the UK to work together on solutions to shared challenges of cultural diversity within the Arts.

This project is focussing on how a better understanding of the role of science in decision-making will help industry articulate and defend decisions to the community, media, inquiries and elsewhere, and, better frame information and advice on how scientists and professionals communicate.

The project, which is part of the Australian Council of Learned Academies' Securing Australia's Future program, examines how language, research and culture can be leveraged as vehicles for Australia's engagement with Asia.

This project will research and co-design the Smart, Skilled, Hired Youth Employment program so as to maximize the engagement of diverse young people and dramatically improve their employment outcomes.

This project investigates the social impact of arts, screen and culture to provide insights into the role their arts and cultural initiatives play in delivering positive benefits to communities across the state.

This project investigates the lived experience and the governance of 'temporally fluid' migration flows from Asia to Australia; explores migrants' senses of belonging over time at local, national and transnational scales; and develops methods and theories to analyse and visualise complex migrant journeys.

Sharing, reciprocity and resource pooling are at the frontline of recovery and relief when economic crisis or disaster hits Monsoon Asia. This research aims to shed light on cases where these economic practices have been innovatively harnessed to diversify livelihoods and build economic resilience.

The Law and Society Trust, together with researchers from the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, have collaborated in an unprecedented report documenting the stories of hardship and resilience of Sri Lankan women with disabilities living in war-affected areas.

The project comprises a group of Metropolis cities, together with a small number of global advisors and relevant research centres from around the world with the common goal towards developments in urban sustainability, taking the lead in the agenda-setting for positive social change.

The project examines the role of Sydney's Chinatown as a bridge in supporting economic and cultural links between Australia and Asia, and the activities undertaken by the City of Sydney to enhance those links in the era of rapid globalisation and rising Chinese power.

This project investigates the impact of globalisation and biomedicine on the legal governance of family life in Australia by comparatively analysing transnational surrogacy arrangements and family reunification in immigration. It will improve public and legal understanding of the changing paradigms of family life in an era of globalisation.

This project aims to show how buildings and places created by Chinese migrants in Australia and home places in China testify, beyond the narrative of arrival and settlement, to Australian connections with China and the Chinese diaspora.

This project investigates the history and impacts of plastic on food production, markets and waste streams and evaluates innovative industry strategies to reduce the over reliance on plastic.

The project aimed to organise a workshop in June 2017, bringing together a trans-disciplinary group of community and scholar-activists to: rethink values associated with community-based food production; devise alternative indicators of value; model diverse value flows in ‘more than capitalist’ urban food economies; and develop a larger collaborative research grant proposal to a major funding body.

This project is examining how LGBTIQ+ young people in Australia have been using social media platforms during COVID-19. The project examines the social media platforms they have participated on, how their behaviours have changed during the pandemic, and the impact of these technologies on their lives, particularly in relation to their health and wellbeing.

This project will study the significance of victimisation, perpetration and the watching of violence and images of violence, among young Australian men. It will explore the underlying links with masculine identity and have practical applications for developing an understanding of the unknown aspects of disengagement from involvements in violence.

This project aims to explain how global built environment and development firms 'push the envelope' of urban space. In cities worldwide, governments are faced with the problem and possibilities of 'volume': stacking and moving people within booming central business districts, especially around mass public transport nodes.

Unlike other studies that focus on refugees’ education, employment, English proficiency and health, this study shines a light on under-researched social and civic dimensions of refugee integration, looking at social bonds, social bridges and social links, with a specific focus on digital inclusion.

This project will examine how WWI refugee movements have contributed to the displacement of national communities and European states. The research is divided into two main parts: examining the situation in Austria-Hungary during WWI; and exploring how the League of Nations High Commission for Refugees assisted refugees with their resettlement after the war.

This project aims to promote awareness of community-based palliative care among consumers and their carers. It involves: identifying the questions, concerns, illusions, misrepresentations, and falsehoods that consumers and carers have about community-based palliative care.

Western Sydney University’s RErights.org team, in partnership with UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children team and UNICEF Country Offices and National Committees internationally, designed and delivered participatory research workshops with 500 children in 26 countries to gather children’s insights about their access and use of digital media.

The Cooperative Research Centre for Young People, Technology and Wellbeing (YAW-CRC) will conduct research to understand the role of online and networked media for improving the mental health and wellbeing of young people aged 12 to 25.