Research at HPS
The HPS program is committed to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge through excellence in research. All members of academic staff contribute to the research profile of the program and are productive and successful members of a global community of researchers. Our research is published in leading journals and HPS program members regularly present papers at national and international conferences.
We have been successful in winning competitive research funding and our current projects include:
- Science and Citizenship: Democracy in the age of science-mediated risk
- A demographic and socio-medical history of the Aboriginal People of Victoria 1800-2000.
- The Connected Home: probing the effects and affects of domesticated information and communication technologies
- Droughts and Flooding Rains: El Nino and La Nina Events in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific 1865 – 1903
- Indigenous Knowledge and Resource Management in Northern Australia
- An ethical analysis of the disclosure of surgeons' performance data to patients within the informed consent process
Research at HPS - Postgraduate Student Research Topics:
Masters Candidates |
Thesis Topic |
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|---|---|---|---|
Vanessa Clifford |
The Powerful Placebo in Medical Practice | ||
John Cotis |
Inside the Machine: A Critique of Technological Redireciton |
||
Michelle Grosser |
Scientific Persuasion? A History of the Role of Science in Australia's Salinity Crisis |
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| Rory Gutterson | Pragmatic Science: Truth and the Role of Justification | ||
| Thomas Mitchell | Biotechnology and Humanity (Human Reproductive Cloning) | ||
| Neil Pescod | Extending the Classical Foundations of Probability for Statistical Inference and Induction | ||
| Matthew Riddle | The Roles Actors Perform: Role play and Reality in a Tertiary Education Context | ||
| John Schauble | Red Steers Exploding Houses: Cultural Interpretations of Bushfire and Their Impact on Community Understanding in Australia | ||
| Michaela Spencer | Doing the Nature(s) of Australia | ||
| John Vilianiotis | Modularity of Mind and Evolutionary Psychology | ||
| Kirsten Walsh | Simplicity and Demarcation | ||
Doctoral Candidates |
Thesis Topic |
||
| Rhain Buth | The Risk in Mediation Through Court ADR | ||
| Rosalind Butler | Placing Knowers: Knowing Places. An Ethnographic Investigation | ||
| Anne-Maree Butt | 'Development Science': A Study of the International Rice Research Institute | ||
| Kerry Carmody | Wired Homes | ||
| Paul Carter | "Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water": Australian Space Science in the Early Space Age | ||
| Helen Cohn | Novelty to Rarity: A History of the National Herbarium of Victoria | ||
| David Condylis | The Natural Selection of Laughter: From Darwin to Evolutionary Psychology | ||
| Fiona Fiddler | From Statistical Significance to Effect Estimation: Statistical Reform in Medicine, Psychology and Ecology | ||
| Stephen Fleischfresser | Claiming Ground: Evolutionary Psychology's Quest for the Unity of Science | ||
| Catherine Foord | Terra Nullius: Lacanian Ethics and Australian Fictions of Origin | ||
| Stephanie Lavau | Meanderings of the Goulburn: The Making of a Healthy Working River | ||
| David Lee | Methodology & Method in Finance | ||
| Anil Nukala | Kuhn's Later Philosophy of Science: An Inquiry into his Metaphysical and Epistemological Dimensions | ||
| Erik Nyberg | Science, Simplicity and Statistics | ||
| Peter Parberry | Policy, Publics and Australian Food Biotechnology: From Public Understanding to Public Engagement | ||
| Gwen Pascoe | 'Long Views and Short Vistas': Public Botanic Gardens in Victoria | ||
| Gary Presland | Reconstructing the Natural History of Melbourne | ||
| Aaron Retz | The Role of Cognition in Nature | ||
| Helen Smith | The Training Package: Articulation and Performance of an Organisational Technology | ||
| Lise Summers | From Wasteland to Parkland: An Investigation into the Historical Factors Influencing the Design and Development of Landscaped Public Open Space in the City of Perth, WA | ||
| Orin Thomas | Scientific Knowledge, Admissible Evidence and the United States Federal Court | ||
| Rey Tiquia | Traditional Chinese Medicine as an Australian Tradition of Health Care | ||
| Ling Wong | A New Project and Methodology for Inductive Logic |