Humanities & Social Sciences

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences web site

Executive Dean: Professor Nick Harvey
Registrar: Mr Robert Ewers

Email: humss.office@adelaide.edu.au

Program enquiries:
students should consult the relevant discipline area, as listed under Research Interests.

Enrolment enquiries: Adelaide Graduate Centre
Phone: 61 8 8303 5882
Email: graduate.centre@adelaide.edu.au

* Research Training Scheme (RTS) - all commencing "local" higher degree by research students enrolled in a research degree at the University of Adelaide are awarded a Research Training Scheme (RTS) place. The RTS place entitles the student to a maximum period of four years of HECS exempt candidature (Full Time Equivalent) to undertake a PhD or two years of HECS exempt candidature (FTE) to undertake a Masters program.
"local" includes Australian citizens or permanent residents and New Zealand citizens.

International
¹ The quoted fee is a base fee that will be subject to an annual increase of up to 3% for each of the subsequent years in the program for the duration published on this site. Students completing the program beyond the maximum published period will be subject to a new base fee.

About the School

The Faculty has an impressive research reputation across a wide range of disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Faculty includes specialised research centres in the areas of:

• Australian Indigenous Research
• History of Food and Drink

The Faculty's commitment to fostering research opportunities has been further enhanced by the creation of the Australian Institute for Social Research during 2004. It is one of Australia's largest interdisciplinary social science research organisations and brings together:

• The Centre for Labour Research
• The Don Dunstan Foundation
• The National Centre for Social Applications of Geographic Information Systems (GISCA)
• The Public Health Information Development Unit (PHIDU)
• The Social Health Unit

The Institute is designed to provide a focal point for contemporary research in the Social Sciences through discipline, commercial and intellectual linkages. The Director of the Institute is Professor Graeme Hugo and the Executive Director is Associate Professor John Spoehr.

Research Interests

Humanities

Phone: 61 8 8303 6058
Fax: 61 8 8303 4341
Email: gerard.obrien@adelaide.edu.au

Anthropology

Phone: 61 8 8303 5730
Fax: 61 8 8303 5733
Email: anthropology@adelaide.edu.au

• Aboriginal Australia
• Africa
• Anthropology of gender relations
• Applied anthropology
• Art and aesthetics in cultural process
• Australia
• Belief systems and ritual symbolism
• Colonialism, the state and third and fourth world peoples
• Contemporary society
• Cosmology and myth
• Cultural constitution of identity ethnicity
• Multiculturalism, nationalism, regionalism
• Development processes
• Domestic organisation
• Ethnography in anthropology; theory and methods of anthropology
• Europe
• Feminist perspectives in ethnography
• Foreign assistance and development in the Asia Pacific
• Gender relations
• Media
• Medical anthropology
• Melanesia and Oceania
• Peasant society
• Photography and the production of political symbols
• Post-modern ethnography
• Religious cults
• Rural society and the contemporary state
• Small communities in contemporary complex society
• Social and political organisation
• Social mobility
• South Asia (Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan)
• Systems of hierarchy and inequality
• Systems of land tenure
• Visual anthropology

Asian Studies

Phone: 61 8 8303 5815
Fax: 61 8 8303 4388
Email: asian.studies@adelaide.edu.au

• Chinese historiography
• Chinese intellectual history
• Chinese philosophy
• Chinese politics and history
• Chinese religion
• Confucianism in China and Japan
• Contemporary Japanese politics
• Educational issues in Japan
• Environmental issues in Japan
• History of medicine in China
• Industrial change in Korea
• Intellectual and cultural change in China
• Japan and the Asia-Pacific
• Japan and industrial change
• Japanese foreign policy
• Late Imperial Chinese history
• Modern Chinese literature
• Nationalism and minority issues in Japan
• Regional development in China
• Religion in Japan
• Rural development in Japan
• Social and political reform in China
• Social change in Japan
• Work and leisure

English

• African literature
• American literature and film
• Australian literature and film
• Autobiography
• Creative writing
• Critical theory
• Cultural studies
• Feminist criticism and theory
• Literary theory
• Media studies
• Modernism
• 19th century fiction
• Old and Middle English language and literature
• Post-colonial writing and theory
• Post-modernism
• Renaissance writing and drama

European Studies

This interdisciplinary programme is based upon the research interests of staff of the School of Humanities and it deals principally with history of ideas and the literature and culture of Europe from Antiquity to the present-day. Supervision is available in the following areas:

• European cinema
• Comparative literature
• History of ideas

Classics

Staff in Classics at Adelaide cover a considerable range of research areas, but one area in particular is emerging as a common focus: Late Antiquity. This includes the literature, archaeology and philosophy of the period from around 300 up to 600 AD (without adhering very strictly to these limits).

Thus Dr Margaret O'Hea is an expert in ancient glass of all periods in antiquity and planning to undertake a survey of the site of Colossae (inhabited up to the 7th c. AD); Dr Ron Newbold has written some 15 articles on Nonnus of Panopolis (5th c.); Dr Jaqueline Clarke is working on the poetry of Prudentius (4th c.); Dr Anne Geddes has built up great expertise on Pamphylia (Turkey) up to the 5th c.; Dr Paul Tuffin, a former staff member and Visiting Research Fellow, is an expert in Byzantine Studies, and currently working on a project funded by a Large ARC grant (with Dr Roger Scott, Melbourne Univ); and Dr Han Baltussen works on the philosophers of Late Antiquity (Aristotelians and Neo-Platonists, 2nd to 6th c. AD). We envisage to start a Late Antiquity Research Center (LARC) in which we can pool our research into a common project in the near future, and we hope this will also lead to guest lectures, seminars, and postgraduate work.

French Studies

The members of staff of the Discipline of French Studies all conduct research in a number of different periods and areas of French cultural production. Due to these varied fields of expertise, higher degree students can be supervised in a great number of different areas from contemporary French society and politics to the literature and social history of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Research Strengths

• 18th century novel
• 19th and 20th century poetry (Baudelaire, Saint-John Perse, Neruda)
• 19th century novel (Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Georges Sand, Maupassant, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Eugène Sue)
• Autobiography (Leiris)
• 20th century thought and aesthetics (Sartre)
• 20th century novel (Céline, Garcia Marquez, Gary/Ajar, Proust, Beckett, Giono, Gracq, Le nouveau roman)
• 20th-century continental philosophy
• Applied linguistics
• Comparative literature
• Contemporary French Society (Tournier, Lainé, Modiano, Ernaux, Djian, Pennac)
• Crime fiction (Gaboriau, Lebrun, Leroux, Malet, Simenon, Daeninckx)
• History of French Exploration in the Pacific (in particular the Baudin Expedition)
• History of Ideas in the 19th Century
• Literature and Politics (19th and 20th Centuries)
• Medieval, 18th, 19th and 20th-century French literature
• Post-structuralism
• Romanticism, surrealism, existentialism, post-structuralism, crime fiction, the Picaresque tradition, autobiography

German Studies

• East German literature, church history, protest music
• German-Australian cultural interconnections
• German enlightenment
• German perceptions of Australia (19th century)
• Individual authors/philosophers: Jean Paul, Alexander von Humboldt, Therese Forster Huber, Wolfram Eschenbach
• Intercultural German studies
• Opera/song and politics (19th and 20th centuries)
• Postcolonial theory
• Word and music studies

Linguistics

• Aboriginal linguistics
• Contact languages
• Ecolinguistics
• History of linguistics
• Language and communication
• Language learning and teaching
• Language planning
• Language preservation
• Linguistic research methods
• Linguistic theory
• Missionary linguistics
• Norfolk Island language
• Pacific linguistics
• Pidgin and Creole linguistics
• Sociolinguistics

Geographical and Environmental Studies

Phone: 61 8 8303 5643
Fax: 61 8 8303 3772
Email: jennifer.payne@adelaide.edu.au

Environmental Studies

• Environmental Change: Australia, South-East Asia & the Pacific
• Biodiversity conservation restoration
• Climatic and environmental change
• Coastal management
• Desertification and land degradation processes
• Communications
• Hazards
• Environmental history
• Impact assessment
• Environmental management
• Environmental philosophy
• Environmental planning and policy-making
• Environmental politics and policy studies
• Gender and development
• Landscape ecology
• Landscape processes and development
• Native vegetation management
• Tourist development and sustainability
• Urban ecology

Geographical Studies

• Ageing
• Aquatic and terrestrial ecology
• Australian population issues
• Conservation and management of natural ecosystems
• Development studies
• Farmer decision-making and landscape change in periurban regions
• Forest history
• Gentrification
• Geographical information science as an evolving discipline
• Historical studies of environmental and economic systems
• HIV/AIDS - geographical and demographic aspects
• Housing studies and the residential land market
• Impact of drought, economic crises and globalisation
• Landscape ecology
• Migration: internal and international
• Palaeoecological and hydrological studies of the Australian environment
• Philosophy and methodology in human geography
• Population mobility
• Population Studies in Australia
• Demographic analysis and human resource development
• Regional development
• Resource management and small-scale agriculture in South-East Asia
• Rural land use, land care and land tenure
• Rural social geography, migration, social mobility and population change
• Urban and regional policy
• Urban management

History

Phone: 61 8 8303 5032
Fax: 61 8 8303 3443
Email: history.office@adelaide.edu.au

• Art History: Australian; Contemporary; History; Modern
• Australian art
• Australian & Indigenous history
• European representations of Aboriginal people
• Frontier violence
• Comparisons with Indigenous history in Canada, New Zealand and the United States of America
• Chinese overseas business
• Colonial era commercial history in Southeast Asia
• European colonial communities in the Netherlands Indies
• Drinking in late-medieval and early modern Europe
• Early modern history; British Asian and European History
• The English revolution
• Cuisine in eighteenth-century mediterranean France
• Food and literature
• Gender and religion/history/race in Australia/representation
• Sugar production, trade and consumption in Asia during the colonial era
• Historical perspectives/biography
• Histories of feminism in Australia, Britain and the United States
• History and memory
• History of Food and Drink
• History of Australian food
• History of emotions in Australia
• Land rights
• Legal and social history
• Material culture and presentation of history in museums
• Medieval cuisine
• Migration
• Nationalism and identity in Australia in relation to 'the new British history'
• Plantation theory and practice
• Russian economic history
• Russian/Soviet secret police
• Russian/Soviet/post-Soviet-American relations
• 20th Century History: International terrorism, genocide; World War I and World War II; History of the Cold War
• Religious sects in seventeenth century England
• Social and cultural history of Australia at war
• Social and economic change in Indonesia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
• South Australian history
• State formation in Yugoslavia
• Toleration and repression in seventeenth century England
• Welfare in Australia

Philosophy

Phone: 61 8 8303 5247
Fax: 61 8 8303 3396
Email: philosophy@adelaide.edu.au

• Aesthetics - Pictorial representation & style, Form & creativity; Aesthetic judgment
• Cognitive science - Delusions, Theoretical foundations of cognitive neuropsychiatry; Neurocomputational models of cognition; Theories of perception; Cognitive neuroscience, Evolution of cognition.
• Epistemology - Self knowledge, memory.
• Kant - Aesthetics; Epistemology; Moral theory.
• Philosophy of language - Semantic realism; Linguistic meaning & understanding.
• Legal philosphy - Philosophy of criminal law; Challenges to liberal legal theory
• Logic & philosophy of mathematics - Paraconsistent logic, Impossible pictures; Deontic logic.
• Philosophy of Mind - Consciousness; Mental representation; Self rationality, Weakness of will; Self-deception; Naturalised theories of mind.
• Moral philosophy - Metaethics; Normative ethical theory; Applied ethics; Consequentialism; Applied ethics (esp. medical ethics); Naturalised theories of ethics and value; Bioethics, personhood, The moral status of nonhuman animals.
• Social & political philosophy - Contemporary theories of justice; History of political thought; Liberalism; Paternalism; Game theory.
• Philosophy of science - Philosophy of physics; Space and time; Quantum theory; Scientific knowledge and method; Theories of explanation; Levels of explanation in cognitive science; Cognitive approaches to philosophy of science.

Politics

Phone: 61 8 8303 5699
Fax: 61 8 83033443
Email: politics@adelaide.edu.au

Area Studies

• African political theory and African politics
• Geopolitics of Northeast Asia and the Middle East
• North American Politics
• Post-socialist politics in Russia and Eastern Europe
• South Pacific politics
• Southeast Asian politics
• West European politics

Australian Politics

• Aboriginal studies
• Australian Liberal and Labor governments
• Parliamentary and constitutional reform
• Public policy theory and practice
• Republicanism

Comparative Politics

• Comparative British/Australian politics
• Development theory
• Gender and issues in liberalism
• Humanitarianism and conflict
• Human rights in the Third World
• India's political economy
• Liberal democratic theory
• Political economy of suicide and homicide
• Political economy of the Third World
• Political obstacles to development
• Political leadership
• Political management of economic reform
• Voting and suffrage

Feminist Political Theory

• Citizenship and community theory
• History of feminist thought
• Politics of sexuality
• Women and policy

History of Political Thought

• Communitarianism
• Development and prehistory of liberalism and stoicism
• French political thought and early French socialism
• Nationalism

International Politics

• Alienation & terrorism
• Asymmetric conflict
• Australian foreign policy
• Balance of power in Asia
• Chinese foreign policy
• Concepts of power in the Asia-Pacific region
• Critical security studies
• Human rights & international justice
• International political economy
• International politics of culture
• International relations theory
• Russian foreign policy

Political Theory

• Language, identity and cultural membership
• Philosophy of J.G. Herder
• Political communication, language and rhetorical theory
• Politics of film, media and popular culture
• Social capital
• Theories of ethics and identity

Radical and Cultural Theory

• Cultural criticism and critical theory
• Market socialism
• Marxism and anarchism
• Media and cultural theory
• Political theory of the community
• Post-colonial theory
• Post-structuralism and post-modernism
• Theories of ideology and discourse

Gender, Work and Social Inquiry

Phone: 61 8 8303 3715
Fax: 61 8 8303 3345
Email: social.enquiry@adelaide.edu.au

• Australia: Cultural studies; Gender & cultural difference; Popular culture & media representations; Race relations.
• Feminism and: Autobiographical studies, Literary criticism & literary history; Food and identity; Generations of women; Historiography; History: Australia & Britain, 19th & 20th centuries; Media studies; Post-modernism and post-colonial perspectives.
• Gender and: Health, particularly in relation to reproduction; Violence.
• Health: Medical anthropology; Social policy.
• History: Life stories; Social movements.
• Industrial relations; Media and power; Social movements; Union structures and practice; Urban politics, work and social life; Youth and work.
• Meanings of animals in contemporary society.
• Post-colonial histories; Research methodology; Theory
• Sexuality
• Women and: ageing & health; Heritage; Women in Australian society; Work