‘By community, for community’ First Nations knowledge – research outlines

Choose a research outline for your application

Advancing the research agenda of the Aboriginal History Archive (RFO-25098)

The Aboriginal History Archive (AHA) – founded on the collection of activist, actor and intellectual Gary Foley and growing in extent – is a unique and internationally significant collection of materials relating to Aboriginal resistance. The AHA prioritises community-based research to ensure that the people whose activism is recorded in the AHA’s collection are engaged in our research in appropriate and meaningful ways. It prioritises critical archival research, honouring the political strength and sharp critique that Aboriginal community members have employed in the events and struggles recorded in the AHA. It also prioritises creativity in approach and communication. 

We seek students who are inspired to document and synthesise histories of Aboriginal political and cultural movements from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. The AHA collection can be a key resource for projects relating to the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Movement; Aboriginal Legal Services; police and State surveillance and repression of activism; Deaths in Custody; museums and repatriation; music, theatre, film and visual arts; media and communications; sport; mining; International Indigenous and Black networks; International advocacy; the 1988 Bicentennial protests; and Community Controlled education, language and literacies.

Supervisors: Professor Gary Foley, Dr Clare Land, Professor Dianne Hall
Institute: Institute for Sustainable Industries & Liveable Cities              
Course Code: UPAF
Field of Research (FoR) Code: 4501 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, language and history

To indicate your interest and discuss your suitability, please contact: Professor Gary Foley, [email protected]

Blak Women’s Healing: Mapping & tracing trauma and healing stories and journeys (RFO-25099)

The Moondani Balluk Creative Research Collective works toward healing and Indigenous ways of ‘being, knowing and doing,’ and draws on foundational Indigenous scholarship. 

The Collective is informed by the work of Aboriginal community, scholars, teachers, activists, artists, carers and protectors of Country. 

The Collective is led by Indigenous researchers and teachers who utilise creative research methods and practices that are culturally informed, draw on art practices, yarning and listening practices. It brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and community members through Indigenist, decolonising and creative ways of being, knowing and doing in support of epistemic justice and healing.

Community self-determination and sovereignty, local knowledges, stories and lived experiences, particularly those from the western region are central to our work.

Our mission is to contribute through creative research and pedagogy to build community and to foster the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal Communities in Melbourne’s west and beyond. 

Supervisors: Professor Christopher Sonn, Dr Paola Balla
Institute: Institute for Health & Sport             
Course Code: UPAD
Field of Research (FoR) Code: 5205 Social and personality psychology

To indicate your interest and discuss your suitability, please contact: Professor Christopher Sonn, [email protected]  

Diasporic dreaming: Documenting Indigenous & migrant struggles for community, belonging, and wellbeing in Australia, US, & Latin America (RFO-25097)

Our team engages with the lived experiences of people and their communities, navigating the complexities of dispersal, migration, colonisation, and systemic marginalisation. 

Through collaborative qualitative, multimodal, and creative methodologies, we explore how communities resist, re-signify, and survive oppressive structures, creating generative healing spaces, and fostering receptive wellbeing promoting social environments (in neighbourhood houses, schools, etc). 

Drawing on Aboriginal Studies, Social and Community Psychology, and Public Health, this focus speaks directly to contemporary challenges in settler-colonial nations like Australia, and there is a commitment to epistemic justice that amplifies knowledge often excluded, marginalised, and silenced in addressing issues of exclusion, racism, and inequity. 

We seek critical community-minded researchers to build on this research by documenting and exploring in local/global contexts:

• how Indigenous, and immigrant community-led action and settings promote solidarities for liberation, structural equity, and wellbeing
• how migrant communities mobilise memory, history, and culture to foster intercultural awareness, postive identities, and solidarity.

Supervisors: Professor Christopher Sonn, Professor Michelle Fine, Dr Amy Quayle, Ms Roshani Jayawardana
Institute: Institute for Health & Sport              
Course Code: UPAD
Field of Research (FoR) Code: 5205 Social and personality psychology

To indicate your interest and discuss your suitability, please contact: Professor Christopher Sonn,  [email protected]