Postgraduates and Honours

Alternative Futures Research Hub (AFRHub established in partnership with NENA) welcomes Expressions of Interest in Supervision in every round of University of Newcastle’s VC Scholarship (both domestic and international) on any topic relevant to the following areas of study:

  1. Investigating post-capitalist responses to global challenges (climate changes, global pandemics, violence, conflict, crime, social inequality, etc). The focus of the project can be on any type of responses from activists/grassroots (e.g., climate justice, climate strikes), to political-economic policy advocacy initiatives and ideologies (wellbeing economy, circular economies, food sovereignty, eco-feminism, eco-socialism, eco-anarchism, etc) to practical projects (permaculture, ecovillages, worker-owned cooperatives, etc). See a longer list of potential post-capital/post-neoliberal alternatives as possible research topics: https://thecommonalts.com/directory-of-alternatives/

    The scope of the research can be local, national, or international.

  2. Mapping Social Dreams: Where do our dreams of the future come from and how do they influence our present actions and decisions? Investigating the social sources of Utopian envisioning of the future and its impacts on present collective transformative actions
  3. Community Wellbeing and Alternative Modes of Quality of Life; Measuring and Exploring Social Determinants of (Subjective/Social) Well-being and Well-living in communities (ethnic, employees, students, local, etc.).
  4. Social and Community Informatics including Data Mining and Big Data Activism for coalition extension, empowering grassroots movements using big data, digital de-colonization, counter climate change, and networking post-capitalist enterprises and communities.
  5. Developing Alternative Social Indices to Measure Complex (Multidimensional and Multilevel) Social Phenomena (e.g. Well-Living, Quality of Life and Happiness; Inclusive Social Development, Surveying Open/Closed-Mindedness, Authoritarian Personalities, Populism, and Cultural In/tolerance).
  6. Corporatization, Commercialization and Technocratic Automation of Higher Education under Neoliberalism and Alternative Higher Education Institutions: Impacts on academic labour and well-being, students learning and well-being, and quality of education, staff/student/union responses and resistance.

Read more about the scholarship scheme here: https://www.newcastle.edu.au/study/research/future-students/scholarships

Applicants with a background in Social Sciences, Development Studies, Political Sciences, (Human) Geography, Political Economy, Ecological Economy, Human Services, Community Welfare, Political Ecology, and Globalization Studies, and the like are encouraged.

Contact Dr. S A Hamed Hosseini to enquire, express your interest or discuss your proposal/thoughts: hamed.hosseini@newcastle.edu.au (use the template below to formulate your research ideas)

Expression of interests and proposals must be received by 10 days before the University scholarship application due date (consult the University website for each year's deadline)

Read more about AFRHub here: https://www.newcastle.edu.au/research/centre/alternative-futures-regional-prospects/afrhub

Download this TEMPLATE to write your INITIAL RESEARCH PROJECT PROPOSAL and submit it using the SUBMIT button in the form

Interested in doing your research project on any one of the above-listed fields of interest (regardless of the scholarship scheme)?

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PhD and Honours degrees by research

Research topics undertaken by postgraduate and Honours students in the field of Alternative Futures and Transformative Global Studies:

Supervised by S A Hamed Hosseini

  • Not So Quiet Australians: Politically Apathic, Or Unapologetically Political? Kegan Mannell (PS Sara Motta)
  • Exploring the ideological underpinnings of urban home food gardening practices from a food sovereignty perspective: A case study of post-COVID19 experiences in Newcastle and the Central Coast, Australia, Mrs. Amanda Falconer, Honours (Sociology and Anthropology)
  • The Sustainable Development Goals in Practice: Interpretation, Gender Equality, and Alternatives in Bangladesh,  Sabrina Islam, Ph.D., (Sociology and Anthropology)
  • ‘“Fees Must Fall” in a Neoliberal University?’: A Socio-political Interrogation of the 2015-2016 Student Protests and the State Responses in South Africa, Tonny Nyundu, Ph.D., (Sociology and Anthropology)
  • What is left of the Washington Consensus? A comparative analysis of the political economy and the Millennium Development Goals in Argentina and Venezuela. Masters, (Sociology and Anthropology)
  • Women’s voices in permaculture: Exploring women’s embodied experiences and views on possibilities of transformative application of ‘social permaculture’. Maria Voznesenskaya, Honours (Sociology and Anthropology)
  • Exploring the cross-ideological encounters between Eco-Feminism and the Sustainability Paradigm through a transversalist analytical lens. Katie Stollznow, Honours (Sociology and Anthropology)