Current projects

We're currently working with local, state and federal governments, as well as business and community groups.

Watch a video montage of footage from the more than a game project.

Some of our projects include:

• Evaluating the Western Bulldogs/Newport Islamic Society ‘More Than A Game’ program. This program builds leadership, teamwork and communication skills among young men through sport, and has created new links between Muslim and Jewish communities in Melbourne. The CCDW is involved in evaluating this program to understand how the lessons learnt from it might be extended.
• Working with the Footscray Community Arts Centre around scoping initiatives to celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2014. The CCDW is serving as a link between a wide range of Victoria University researchers and the Arts Centre, to strengthen the creativity and impact of the 40th anniversary.
• Working with different local government authorities around community engagement, in particular with culturally and linguistically diverse communities.
• Working with Victoria Police to analyse police complaints data.
• Researching the role of social media in inter-generation relations among the Samoan community in Australia.

Research Supervision

Staff at CCDW are available for Student Supervision in areas relating to health, wellbeing, cultural diversity and technology. This section outlines the areas of research covered by individual staff members.  

Professor Kevin Mcdonald

Kevin McDonald is a sociologist working in the area of social and religious movements, action and ethics, performativity and cultural agency, the sociology of violence, youth and urban experience.  His work spans different research methods, but is particularly interested in new types of experimental and ethnographic methods, with a focus on sensory data and new approaches to agency. Kevin has published in French and Spanish, and is very interested in supervising work involving issues of cultural translation. He is keen to supervise across the following areas:

• Social and religious movements
• Action and Ethics
• Performativity and cultural agency
• The sociology of violence
• Youth and urban experience

Associate Professor Craig Fry

Craig’s methods expertise spans questionnaire and survey design, research interview, public health methods development, applied ethics and bioethics. He publishes widely and supervises students across the following areas:

• Ethical challenges in research on illicit and stigmatised behaviour 
• Public health ethics 
• Addiction and moral identity 
• Ethical and policy implications of E-health research and practice 
• Illicit drug epidemiology and surveillance
• Drug policy

Associate Professor Michele Grossman

Michele works in the inter-discipline of cultural studies and is an experienced supervisor of PhD and Masters by Research students. Both Michele and her students have won university awards related to research supervision and postgraduate research outcomes. She is available to consider supervising research student projects in the following areas within studies in cultural diversity and wellbeing:

• Post-refugee identities, belonging and wellbeing
• Transnational experiences of Sudanese community life and identity
• Cultural diversity, youth and policing
• Countering violent extremism, cultural diversity and community engagement
• Writing across cultures - literature and representation
• Interdisciplinary approaches to negotiating cultural identity and cultural difference, including creative writing projects

Dr Stefan Schutt

Stefan is an award-winning researcher specialising in technology, young people, narrative and the Internet. He has run a range of web technology, virtual world, mobile phone and serious games projects, and is currently heading up The Lab, a technology club for young people with Asperger's Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism. Stefan is available for associate supervision of PhDs and full supervision of Masters projects in the following areas:

• Young people and technology
• Narrative and the Internet
• Digital media
• Educational technologies
• Social media and games
• Asperger's Syndrome and High Functioning Autism

Research Progammes 

We are currently developing three research programs as outlined below.

Mobilities, transitions and resilience

Areas covered include:

• migration, settlement and displacement
• community resilience
• religious diversity and reconfigurations of religious experience and traditions
• refugee and diasporic experience
• community, place, and social connection.

Cultural diversity, technologies and creativity

Areas covered include:

• art, technology and cultural diversity
• technologies empowering groups and communities
• creative industries, digital humanities and social sciences
• creativity, ethics and democratic lifer
• productive diversity: diversity at work.

Wellbeing, embodiment and diversity

Areas covered include:

• health, place and community
• supporting wellbeing
• service design, delivery and transformation
• sport and cultural diversity
• sexualities and wellbeing.

Contact us

Find out more about our research by contacting us directly.