Arts Faculty News

Monash researchers with the Australian Federal Police

Monash researchers are collaborating with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) on a new training program as part of a broader research project on counter-terrorism policing.

A one-WEEK pilot course on investigative interviewing techniques has been launched, incorporating linguistic as well as psychologically-based approaches to interviewing. Inter-cultural communication issues will also be addressed.

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Deans Teaching Awards

A ceremony was held last week at the Monash Staff Club to recognise excellence in teaching within the Arts Faculty. For the first time, there was also recognition of the work of sessional teaching staff.

Dr JaneMaree Maher, Associate Dean (Education), School of Political and Social Inquiry, said the Faculty of Arts contained many passionate and committed teachers and those receiving awards exemplified all the best attributes; concern for students, innovative and engaged teaching practices and a vision of education as transforming the world everyday in small yet significant ways. Nominations were made by Heads of schools and undergraduate coordinators, drawing on unit evaluations and other evidence of curriculum quality.

In her address, Professor Rae Frances congratulated all the awarded staff and said that decisions between excellent teachers were always challenging; she noted that “the number of awards today reflects the depth of talent in teaching in the Faculty of Arts”. Professor Frances said that “teachers in classrooms are Monash University’s most important ambassadors and memories of great teaching will stay with students for all of their lives”.

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Professor Bruce Scate

Professor Bruce Scates Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies has secured over $300,000 in funding in the latest ARC linkage round. His project involves the first extended study of soldier settlement in New South Wales, which ‘opened up’ vast tracts of the state in the aftermath of the Great War. ‘A Land Fit for Heroes’ involves collaboration with Department of Veterans’ Affairs and State Records NSW. Based on recently opened archives it will address emerging themes in transnational and environmental history, enrich regional/community histories and recover the largely forgotten experience of soldier settlers and their families as they battled with the land.

“The digger has an iconographic status in Australian society”, Professor Scates commented “and thousands of families have charted the service records of relatives who served in the first AIF. This project will recover the returned soldier as important an historical entity as the men (and women) who went to war. It will look at ways our society tried to recover from the trauma of war, examine veterans’ return to Australia and their difficult readjustment to civil society”. The project is perfectly placed in the National Centre for Australian Studies addressing as it does issues of national significance. “Like many in regional NSW today soldier settlers struggled against isolation, drought and financial hardship. This project will evaluate the role soldier settlement played in populating remote districts and assess its long-term environmental impacts”.

Included in the grant is an Australian Postgraduate Scholarship and amongst the projected outcomes is a website charting the fate of some 9000 settlers. Professor Scates’ fellow chief investigator is A/Professor Melanie Oppenheimer.