Category: 2018
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Rustam Alexander
‘Homosexuality in the USSR, 1956–82’ (PhD in History, 2018). This thesis investigates the history of debates on homosexuality in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Drawing on a range of hitherto unexplored archival and other sources I demonstrate that there was a lively discussion on the subject among various Soviet experts during this period. […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/11/07/rustam-alexander
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Ken Barelli
‘The Voice of Methodism: Temperance Policy in Victoria, Australia 1902–1977’ (MA in History, 2018). This thesis seeks to examine the influence of the Methodist Church in Victoria, Australia, on public policy in the twentieth century using the issue of Temperance as a case study. Methodists had a tradition of social activism dating back to their […] -
Ross Barham
‘Davidson’s Objective — Language and The Concept of Objectivity’ (PhD in Philosophy, 2018). This thesis critically examines Donald Davidson’s claim that language plays a non-trivial role in explaining possession of the concept of objectivity. After showing that a priori arguments do not establish this claim, different versions of Davidson’s triangulation argument are developed and found […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/11/06/ross-barham-2
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Najwa Belkziz
‘The Politics of Memory and Transitional Justice in Morocco’ (PhD in History, 2018). This thesis investigated four decades of human rights abuses in Morocco and the transitional justice mechanisms implemented by the governing regime between 1990 and 2015 to reckon with this violent legacy. My critical discourse analysis of the official and opposition narratives about […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/11/06/najwa-belkziz
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Brigid Evans
‘Integration or Separation? Educational Justice Requirements for the Disabled’ (MA in Philosophy, 2018). In academic political philosophy, there is currently much enthusiasm surrounding the development of integration as a requirement of social justice. The application of integration to educational policy already exists but has centred on overcoming racial and/or economic segregation. Integration as a moral […] -
Nicholas Evans
‘A Revolution in Just War Theory? Expanding the Laws and Ethics of War to Cover Revolutionary Conflict’ (PhD in Philosophy, 2018). Can just war theory be extended to cover revolutionary conflict and other forms of intrastate war? In short, it can be. Yet how this might be achieved is contingent on one’s commitment to particular […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/11/04/nicholas-evans
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Emily Fitzgerald
‘”That Great Country to Which We Must Constantly Look”: Australia and the United States in the Development of Australian Federation’ (PhD in History, 2018). This thesis examined Australian federation in the context of Australian-United States relations, particularly the influence of the US on the development of the Australian Constitution in the 1890s, and placed Australian […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/11/04/emily-fitzgerald
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Xavier Fowler
‘Sport and the Australian War Effort during the First World War: Concord and Conflict’ (PhD in History, 2018). With concerns surrounding national security emerging from 1900 onward ideas surrounding the playing of sport as a preparation for warfare became common. The outbreak of war in 1914 oversaw the variable explosion of this connection between playing […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/11/03/xavier-fowler
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Ariel Kruger
‘A Principled Reason to Prefer Causal Explanation in the Sciences’ (PhD in Philosophy, 2018). Not all scientific explanations are causal; some are non-causal. Can we find any reason to prefer one over the other? If the explanations are competing to explain the same phenomenon and adjudicating between them cannot be done on empirical grounds, I […] -
Tessa Leach
‘Anthropomorphic Machines: Alien Sensation and Experience in Nonhumans Created to Be Like Us’ (PhD in History & Philosophy of Science, 2018). This thesis is positioned at the intersection of technology studies and the nonhuman turn in the humanities. It argues that typical approaches to the study of technology omit any consideration of the alien nature […] -
James Lesh
‘At the Intersection of Heritage Preservation, Urban Transformation, and Everyday Life in the Twentieth-Century Australian City’ (PhD in History, 2018). This thesis investigated the history and theory of urban heritage conservation in Australia’s capital cities during the twentieth century. He placed the evolution of Australian urban conservation in its social, cultural and economic contexts both […] -
Xavier Ma
‘Ground for Knowing: Minerals, Mining Science and the Making of Modern China’s Territory (1860–1937)’ (PhD in History, 2018). The thesis uses mining science (kuangxue) to examine the relationship between science and socio-cultural change in late Qing and early Republican China (1860–1937). It explores the ways in which the theoretical and applied knowledge of minerals and […] -
Mia Martin Hobbs
‘Nostalgia and the Warzone Home: American and Australian Veterans Return to Việt Nam, 1981–2016′ (PhD in History, 2018). From 1981 to 2016, thousands of Australian and American veterans returned to Việt Nam. In this comparative oral history investigation, I examine why veterans returned and how they reacted to the people and places of Việt Nam—their former enemies, allies, […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/11/01/mia-martin-hobbs
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Iain McIntyre
‘Tree-sits, Barricades and Lock-ons: Obstructive Direct Action and the History of the Environmental Movement, 1979–1990′ (PhD in History, 2018). During the 1980s the protection of bio-diverse places became a major global issue. In part this resulted from efforts by Indigenous people in a variety of countries to protect and reclaim territories. Challenges to dominant practices […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/11/01/iain-mcintyre
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Alexander McPhee-Browne
‘Evangelists for Freedom: Libertarian Populism and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Conservatism, 1930–1950′ (MA in History, 2018). This thesis examines the history of rightwing anti-statist thought in twentieth-century America from 1930 to 1950, focusing on the works of an array of intellectuals, politicians and activists who forged a distinct synthesis of classical American individualism with […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/11/01/alexander-mcphee-browne
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Mahmoud Mohammed
‘Changes in the Chemical Composition of Archaeological Wood Caused by Exposure to Different Environments and Its Relation with the Other Properties’ (PhD in cultural materials & conservation, 2018). This thesis aims to characterise the deterioration mechanisms of dry cultural heritage wood by applying a multi-analytical technique that is comparable to that used for waterlogged archaeological […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/11/01/mahmoud-mohammed
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David Mouritz
‘East Greek Pottery and Graeco-Anatolian Mercenaries in the Southern Levant in Iron Age IIC (ca. 600 BCE)’ (PhD in Ancient World Studies, 2018). This thesis questions the current scholarly consensus that East Greek mercenaries were responsible for the late seventh-century BCE East Greek pottery found in the Southern Levant. It is argued that it is […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/10/30/david-mouritz
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Toby Nash
‘At Water’s Edge: Empire, Disorder, and Commerce on the Docks in British America, 1714–1774’ (MA in History, 2018). Early modern British imperial commerce focused its trading operations upon the orderly extraction of wealth from its colonies. This thesis argues that a key area of this process was the urban waterfront sector in its Atlantic port […] -
Emily Noake
‘Identifying, Characterising and Mapping the Deterioration of Cellulose Nitrate in Museum Collections: An Archaeological Adhesive Case Study’ (PhD in Cultural Materials Conservation, 2018). Introduced in the 1870s, cellulose nitrate (CN) has been widely used as a plastic, in film, coatings and adhesives. Research has shown CN to be an inherently unstable material, subject to rapid, […] -
Chad Stevenson
‘Playing the Hand You’re Dealt: Well-being and the Poker-Hand Account’ (MA in Philosophy, 2018). This thesis advances a novel theory of wellbeing called the poker-hand account. On this account, welfare is not one-dimensional (as is traditionally supposed) but two-dimensional. This bipartite model of welfare draws a distinction between how a person is ‘going’ (what states-of-affairs […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/10/26/chad-stevenson
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Annelies van de Ven
‘The Many Faces of the Cyrus Cylinder: Displaying Contested Objects as Constellations’ (PhD in Classics & Archaeology, 2018). Archaeological artefacts and sites are never just singular entities. Rather, they function as constellations, accruing various meanings and associations throughout their lives. For researchers as well as museum professionals, this polyphony challenges any straightforward reception, necessitating a […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/10/23/annelies-van-de-ven
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Eva van der Brugge
‘The Use of Argument Mapping in Improving Critical Thinking’ (PhD in Philosophy, 2018). Critical thinking is not defined clearly enough to guide teachers in practice. Even within the broad definitional categories that can be discerned, individual definitions are rarely specific enough to allow for clear educational or assessment frameworks. Purpose-built critical thinking tests mostly fail […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/10/23/eva-van-der-brugge
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Sayad Sadra Zekrgoo
‘Persian Inks: A study on traditional writing matters used in Persia (15th–18th CE) through collection of recipes, historical reconstruction and non-invasive analysis of University of Melbourne’s Middle-Eastern manuscript collection’ (PhD in Cultural Materials Conservation, 2018). This thesis investigated optimum methods for the identification of different black inks used in Persia, mainly during the Safavid period […]blogs.unimelb.edu.au/shaps-research/2016/10/22/sayad-sadra-zekrgoo
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Dan Zhao
‘Foreigners and Propaganda: War and Peace in the Imperial Images of Augustus and Qin Shi Huangdi’ (MA in Classics, 2018). This thesis explores the relationship between the portrayals of foreign peoples and concepts of ‘moral’ or ‘just’ warfare during the reigns of Augustus (r. 27 BCE–14 CE) and the first emperor of the Qin dynasty […]
