Three ARC grant successes for Bell School
This week three of our Bell School researchers have received the wonderful news that they have been successful in winning ARC research funding. We are delighted to congratulate:
> Evelyn Goh from the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre has won an ARC Discovery Grant for her project ‘The Infrastructure of China’s International Influence: Connecting Developmentalism, Nation-building, and Regime Security in Asia’. This project aims to investigate how China uses infrastructure-driven development to wield international influence, by studying how Chinese ideas of ‘developmentalism’ interact with nation-building and regime security imperatives in Indonesia, Myanmar and Laos. The project expects to generate new comparative knowledge about development logics and competing sectoral interests around major infrastructure projects that breaks new conceptual ground on analysing international influence and the economic-security nexus in Asia. Enhanced understanding of the conditions under which China’s development model is attractive to others would benefit Australian and international agencies seeking strategic diplomatic and investment decisions in the Asia-Pacific.
> Stephan Fruehling from the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre has won and ARC Discovery Grant to study the ANZUS Alliance, together with research partners at Griffith University and University of Western Australia. The project, ‘Do the Ties Bind? Expectations and Commitments in the Australia-US Alliance’ aims to investigate the gap between the high expectations of mutual support and the lack of detailed security commitments in the Australia-US Alliance. Looking beyond public declarations and diplomatic history, the project delves into the institutional fabric of the Alliance by investigating working-level interactions since the 1950s between officials across the political, military, and intelligence domains. Using a focused approach that captures thematic aspects of the alliance through project frames and historical slices across time, the project investigates how cooperation between senior and mid-level officials on both sides shapes expectations and commitments of support.
> Cecilia Jacob from our Department of International Relations has won a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) from the ARC to study UN human protection practices. Her project ‘United Nations Peace and Security Reform for Human Protection’ aims to investigate how reform of the United Nations peace and security architecture is shaping the organisation’s human protection practices in local conflicts. It develops a new framework for studying the international-local interactions that influence global norm making and implementation, using interdisciplinary methods drawn from sociology, international relations and international law. Expected outcomes include enhanced understanding of the factors driving major institutional reform in the UN and the impact of reform on UN prevention and protection. It will benefit Australian and international policymakers seeking to support the UN reform agenda to enhance international stability and human protection.
