Research highlights

• A/Prof. Steve Threadgold, A/Prof. Julia Coffey and Dr.  Julia Cook (with Professor Roger Burrows and Professor Beverley Skeggs) have been awarded $415,519 for their ARC Discovery project  Young People, Fintech Use and Future Financial Security. This project will be the first to explore how young people navigate and understand the new landscape of fintech platforms and products, and to uncover the hitherto hidden impacts of fintech sorting and classificatory processes.
• Prof. Jesper Gulddal (with Dr Stewart King; Dr Barbara Pezzotti; Dr Carlos Uxo Gonzalez; Prof. Jarrod Hayes) has been awarded $265,773 for their ARC Discovery project World Crime Fiction: Making Sense of a Global Genre. This project aims to generate new knowledge about the worldwide popularity of crime fiction by analysing the genre’s engagement with the major global challenges of our time, from climate change to the crisis of democracy.
• Dr Effie Karageorgos and Prof. Catharine Coleborne have been awarded $234, 359 for their ARC Discovery project Life outside institutions: histories of mental health aftercare 1900 - 1960. This project aims to show that post-institutional care is central to the history of mental health before the era of deinstitutionalisation.
• Dr. Ryan Strickler (with Prof. Bronwen Neil; Dr Amelia Brown; Dr Estelle Strazdins) has been awarded $230,368 for their ARC Discovery project Images of Power in the Roman Empire: Mass Media and the Cult of Emperors. This project aims to illuminate the role that mass media and images played in securing and sustaining imperial power during the Later Roman empire.
• Prof. Victoria Haskins and Prof. Kate Senior (with Dr Raymond Kelly; Prof. John Maynard; Prof. Richard Chenhall; Dr Frances Edmonds; Prof. Kathleen Clapham; and Mr Gionni Di Gravio) have been awarded $370,408 for their ARC Discovery project Ngukurr to Newcastle: intercultural collaboration and influence. This interdisciplinary project will explore the intercultural contributions of residents from a remote Aboriginal community both on their own community and the broader Australian society.
• Dr. Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen (with Prof. Noah Riseman, Dr Tristan Moss, Dr Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen, Dr Alana Piper) has been awarded $264,435 for their ARC Discovery Project, A Century of Sex and the Australian Military, 1914-2020. This project aims to explore how the Australian military and its members have dealt with sex and sexuality.
• Dr. Ümit Kurt has been awarded $369,424 funding for his ARC DECRA project Global Patterns of Mass Violence: Ottoman Borderlands in Context, 1890-1920. This project examines the transformative dimensions of mass violence committed against the minorities of the Ottoman Empire – Armenians, Assyrians, Yazidis, and Greeks – and the historical impact and consequences of the Empire’s violent history on the Balkans and the Levant (Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon).

Janet Copley (1926-2017), and her husband Merv, were tireless political activists and campaigners for social justice in Newcastle. Evidence of their contribution can be found in the Merv and Janet Copley Collection of news clippings, diaries and autobiographical writing gifted to the University of Newcastle’s Cultural Collections in 2006. The Copley Bequest Pilot Research funds projects up to $10,000 and is intended to seed research development and linkage opportunities. Projects will utilise University of Newcastle and greater Newcastle region historical archival and visual collections with a view to wider community impact for Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences research.

The Copley Archives contains a wealth of material from WW2 to the late 1970s. They contain many Newcastle-specific material, but also through the numerous travel diaries and observations of Australian social life, culture, environment, economy, and industry.

Since the scheme began in 2019, it has funded 15 projects on important social justice topics through in-depth explorations of archival materials documenting period of intense social change in Newcastle. Projects are conducted with support and expertise from staff in the University Library’s Cultural Collections.

Funded projects:

• 2025/26: Effie Karageorgos, Penny Buykx, Kate Senior & Ann Hardy: Surveying alcohol use in Newcastle through the Copley collections 
• 2025/26: Elaine Xu & Belinda Bennett: Public Health Messaging and Visual Narratives of Infectious Diseases in the Hunter from 1950s to 1970s
• 2025/26: Marie-Laure Vuaille-Barcan: Tracing the History of the Alliance Française de Newcastle and Its University Connections
• 2024/25: Prof Catharine Coleborne, Dr Effie Karageorgos, Dr Ann Hardy and A/Prof Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen – Sickness and Health in the Copley Archive: Medical Humanities Approaches to the Collections 
• 2024/25: Sacha Davis, Julie McIntyre, Jaime Hunt (in PALS) with Industry partners named as applicants: Bridie Moran (Newcastle Museum), Morgan Burgess (Cultural Collections) - German-speakers in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley: migrants, descendants and language legacies, 1849 to the present
• 2023: Dr Jeannine Baker – Women at NBN-3 Project
• 2023: Prof Vicky Haskins - Exploring and re-imagining an emerging consciousness of Indigenous rights through the Copley and Masterton Archives 
• 2022: A/Prof Elizabeth Roberts Pedersen and Dr Kate Davies - Women's Homelessness in Newcastle
• 2022/2023: Dr David Betts and Dr Justin Ellis - Mapping place and (co)use of public spaces in Newcastle by diverse groups for social organising and cohesion, Newcastle Queer Research Project
• 2021: Dr Julie McIntyre, Julia Cook & Steven Threadgold - Participation and representation: Media coverage of women’s sport in Newcastle
• 2021: Keri Glastonbury, Alexandra Lewis, and Caelli Brooker - Unbroken Records: Creating Aging and the Regional Digital Library
• 2020: Dr Justin Ellis, Dr David Betts, Professor Kate Senior – Policing perversion: Surveilling Queer Newcastle 1950-1980
• 2020: Kath McPhillips - Researching historical archives related to clergy perpetrated child sexual abuse in the Hunter region
• 2019: Professor Marguerite Johnson and Dr James Bennett – Marriage Equality in the Hunter Exhibition
• 2019: Trisha Pender and Tamara Blakemore – (i) Hunter Women’s Financial Literacy and (ii) 16 days of Activism to End Gender-Based Violence