Building long-term relationships

A message from Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise) Professor Abid Khan:

As we rush towards the middle of 2024, it's important to acknowledge the continued hard work, excellence and impact of our academic and professional community and the way it remains focussed on delivering all facets of the university's mission and strategic objectives. Colleagues are actively pursuing the multifactorial aspects of research and, while continuing to produce the highest quality publication outputs, are pushing up our HDR loads and increasing the forms of engagement ACU has with the external stakeholder community. Positively, this has resulted in growth in research income across the university, demonstrating the value of the partnerships the university's community is building at all levels of government, industry and philanthropy in supporting our research both locally and globally.

I am pleased to highlight just some of the recent successes across our faculties.

In the Faculty of Education and Arts

• The Principals Australia Research Foundation is supporting research in the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education on Australian school leaders’ resilience.
• The Victorian government is funding an Institute for Child Protection Studies study to inform the SAFER framework for families and children.
• ACU historians from the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences and Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry have won an inaugural Japan Past & Present grant to explore gender, migration, emotions, and mobility in Japan’s early modern global exchanges.

In the Faculty of Health Sciences

• Allied Health researchers are conducting research funded by the NHMRC and Cerebral Palsy Alliance on infants, adolescents and young adults with CP.
• Brain Australia is funding a neuroimaging study in the Healthy Brain and Mind Research Centre on early onset psychosis and cannabis use.
• Exercise scientists in the School of Behavioural and Health Sciences are leading an Australian Institute for Sport study of performance wellbeing for coaches in Australian sport.
• SPRINT researchers are evaluating Peak Medical’s motion capture system for assessing human movement and are also collaborating with the Defence Science Institute on a co-funded PhD study of nutritional supplementation following ACL injury.

In the Faculty of Law and Business

• Social Ventures Australia is funding research in the Peter Faber Business School on employment of young people facing disadvantage alongside a US-funded study on the influence of gender on organisational performance.
• The Australia-Indonesia Partnership is funding a study in the Thomas More Law School on the adoption of international principles into Indonesia’s inclusive disability employment policies.
• ACU law researchers are also collaborating on a project funded by Victorian Women’s Trust to understand family violence in women’s deaths by suicide.

In the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy

• Our Australian Research Council DECRA research on ancient female philosophers and Biblical disability was showcased to international and local audiences, among other high profile scholarly engagements in the faculty.

International outreach

Our outreach in the Asia-Pacific region will be critical to growing and sustaining our global research and education strategies over the next decade, both through collaborations with partners in the region and collaboration with global stakeholders that recognise our region's opportunities and challenges.

My colleagues and I have recently returned from Indonesia, where we explored opportunities for closer research collaboration with our largest neighbour. We received very positive responses from government agencies and advisors, and Catholic and non-Catholic universities, about multi-tiered engagements in child wellbeing and nutrition, Indigenous-led research, and religion and theology, all areas of priority for the incoming Indonesian president. Alongside this, we also discussed opportunities for all our faculties in helping build research and workforce capacity in Indonesia's academic, industrial and government organisations.

Our Graduate Research School is central to these bilateral engagements with Indonesia and with India following an earlier delegation led by the Vice-Chancellor. We are developing a model of flexible, offshore and onshore engagement, with a range of joint PhD and co-supervision models to upskill in critical workforce areas across our region. This will help us build long term relationships on areas of bilateral need, continuing to build on the university's innovative capabilities while further supporting our mission objectives.