McKenzie Fellows – one year on

The University’s nine inaugural McKenzie Fellows include a stalagmite specialist, a researcher looking into the future of digital publishing, two researchers whose projects will combat racism in Australia and a medical researcher developing new treatments for osteoporosis, a genetic epidemiologist, astrophysicist turned infectious disease researcher, ethnomusicologicalist and a law researcher.

The 2010 Fellows were selected from a large field of recent doctoral graduates from universities around the world for their potential to build and lead cross-disciplinary collaborative research activities within and across faculties.

Applicants from all fields were eligible for the awards says Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Lyn Yates (right) but the researchers selected are ones who show capacity to collaborate beyond their specific field as well as demonstrating high achievement in it.

“The McKenzie scheme complements other forms of recruiting, and signals strongly to the international community our research commitments and interest in attracting the best scholars of the next generation,” she says.

“It provides a select, elite intake of young researchers who not only show exceptional research capacity, but who have the capacity to work with others to build new types of innovative and collaborative research in the future.”

The McKenzie Fellowships were built on an initial endowment fund established to acknowledge the outstanding contribution made to the University of Melbourne by Former Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor John McKenzie to mark his retirement.

Though the 2010 McKenzie Fellows are working in dramatically different research fields in many different areas of the University, without exception they say their favourite thing about coming to the University of Melbourne was their new colleagues and the University’s research environment.

Dr Yin Paradies is involved in a range of research projects to form links with policy-makers and practitioners to improve our understanding of and ability to address racism through collaborative research and teaching across the academic, government, non-government and community sectors.

Dr Paradies says he was thoroughly enjoying collaborating with “some really amazing and top-notch researchers to develop and explore new areas of work.

“Racism is a pernicious problem with serious but poorly understood consequences for both affected individuals and society,” he says.

 “About a quarter of people from non-English speaking backgrounds and a similar proportion of Indigenous Australians have experienced racism in the past year. We have evidence to suggest experiences of racism are on the rise with 14 per cent of all Australians reporting such experiences in 2010 compared with 10 per cent in 2009.”

Dr Chad Bousman completed his PhD in Public Health (Health Behaviour) at the University of California San Diego. In collaboration with colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry, he is working to uncover genetic biomarkers for the onset of psychotic disorders including schizophrenia. Discovery of genetic biomarkers for the onset of psychosis would allow for early identification of at- risk individuals and aid healthcare providers in implementation of tailored interventions to prevent or delay the onset of psychosis.  

“I have been particularly impressed with the openness to collaboration within and across departments,” Dr Bousman says.

Dr Caroline Hamilton is based in the School of Culture and Communication. She says she loves research life at the University. “I’ve found a great range of people here really motivated and committed to research and teaching – especially in my discipline of publishing and communications.”

“My project involves studying the work of small publishers in Melbourne, so I’ve also had a chance to explore the rich cultural life which surrounds our University.”

Dr Hamilton is looking into small-scale, independent publishing in the digital era. “It’s no secret digital publishing is causing a lot of anxiety in traditional publishing.”

“My project will develop a good understanding of all these changes on a smaller scale. Small publishers have many advantages over big publishers when it comes to adapting to technological changes and by looking at them.”

Dr Robyn Pickering says she accepted the McKenzie Fellowship to take advantage of the fantastic laboratory facilities in the University’s School of Earth Sciences. She says the best thing about her move to Melbourne (she completed a PhD at the University of Bern, Switzerland) has been the combination of the world-class laboratory facilities and highly-experienced, friendly colleagues.

Dr Pickering is using the natural decay of uranium to lead in stalagmites (cave formations) to date them and to learn more about past climate changes.

“I am hoping to generate a record of climate change for the past three million years for southern African using stalagmites,” she explains.

“We are all familiar with the importance of global warming and future climate change, but we also need to understand past climate change and how our planet responded to it.

Dr Mariana Kersh says everyone she had interacted with had been very helpful and eager to share their experiences and knowledge about Melbourne, the University, and Australia. She is based in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

“My favourite thing about being at the University is the potential for collaboration with world-class leaders in my field,” she says. Dr Kersh hopes to understand the role muscles play in loading bone during different activities.  “Bone is constantly changing and adapting to its environment – it gets stronger under more loads (or activity) and weaker when it is not loaded,” she explained.

“The weakening of bone can lead to osteoporosis, a disease that afflicts the elderly and can become problematic in athletes. Understanding which muscles contribute to bone loading can help in the development of therapies that positively load the bone, thereby increasing the bone’s strength.”

Dr Shakira Hussein is based at the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies at the University’s Asia Centre, where, she says, the diversity of experience and outlooks generates some fascinating conversations.

“I’m grateful to be undertaking this work in Melbourne, where some of the most interesting conversations are taking place. It would be arrogant to walk into the middle of those conversations without taking the time to listen, get orientated and find out what work is already being done.”

Dr Hussein will contribute to the work being done to develop effective strategies women may use in combating both gender violence and racism.

“Muslim women (and not only Muslim women) in Australia often find themselves engaged in a difficult balancing act in combating problems within their communities in the face of external hostility that is directed at their communities as a whole,” she says.

“Problems such as gender violence are often cited as evidence that Muslims are an alien and dangerous presence within Australian society, without acknowledging that such issues are neither universal among nor particular to Muslims.

Dr Kirsty Bolton recently changed fields from astrophysics to infectious disease modelling. She is involved in several research projects focused on population-level transmission of influenza from fitting historical influenza pandemic data sets to developing models for influenza strain interaction and evolution. “It has been (and continues to be) a rewarding challenge to understand the new context in which I am working,” she says.

Dr Sally Treloyn says it was a great privilege to work at a world-class institution, in a beautiful city, in the company of world-class academics.

“Perhaps one of the most satisfying aspects of being at the University of Melbourne is the opportunity it provides to collaborate with innovative and experienced researchers from diverse disciplines,” she says.

“The McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowship has enabled me to plan for and carry out extensive ethnomusicological field research in partnership with Indigenous organisations and communities in the Kimberley.”

Dr Treloyn hopes to discover better ways to sustain and preserve highly endangered song and dance traditions in the Kimberley region of northern Australia.

Dr Lael Weis says she was very happy with her University experience so far. “My colleagues at the law school have been welcoming and supportive, and I continue to feel this fellowship is ideal for making the transition from being a full-time graduate student to being an academic staff member of a faculty.

My colleagues here are interesting, engaged, diverse, and passionate about their work; it’s a perfect environment for setting and achieving early career goals.

Her work aims to understand the limitations of the way we – people in western constitutional democracies – think about property and rights in law and politics.

“Most property talk plays on the rhetoric of exclusive possession, non-interference, and private domain,” she explains. But this is an inaccurate description of what property is and does; it captures only a very narrow range of reasons for thinking that property rights – rules concerning the use and control of resources – are important.

“This matters because I think a lot of people, both back home in the United States and here in Australia, share the sense that property serves shared or public values that are important to protect,” she says.