12 December 2007
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Professor Barbara Caine, Head of the School of Historical Studies, is just one of this year's Monash University arts faculty ARC grant recipients.
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The Australian Research Council grants for 2007 are a good indicator of the extensive diversity within Monash University's Faculty of Arts.
This year's grants awarded to arts faculty academics embraced a wide field of research areas.
These included areas such as historical studies; archaeology and prehistory; journalism, communication and the media; studies in human society; cultural studies; philosophy; atmospheric sciences; linguistics and anthropology.
Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor Rae Frances, said the number and diversity of successful applicants within the faculty in this year's ARC grants round is testament to not only the excellence of its researchers but also the broad spectrum their endeavours cover.
"I am particularly proud of all of our researchers, and the ARC grants are just one symbol of the outstanding research that the arts faculty at Monash is undertaking in many important areas, like so many other faculties within the University," Professor Frances said.
One of the successful arts faculty applicants, among many within the faculty, is School of Historical Studies Head Professor Barbara Caine.
Professor Caine was awarded a prestigious ARC Professorial Fellowship for her project, History and the Individual Life: Autobiography, Biography and the history of the self in the British World c1750 -- 1980.
A summary of the project states:
In providing a new way of linking autobiography with the history of identity and the self, this project will open new avenues for the study of history which will be important in Australia and internationally.
Its focus on the British world will also bring Australian writing and experience into a broader international framework.
At a time when biography is so very popular and widely read, it offers the possibility of bringing academic scholarship closer to questions of general interest to the community and thus re-enforcing the significance of academic research in the humanities.
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Professor Neville Nicholls, from the School of Geography and Environmental Science, has received an arts faculty ARC grant.
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"I am absolutely thrilled at the thought of having 5 years to devote primarily to research -- and particularly because of the way in which this project allows me to bring my various different areas of research together," Professor Caine said.
"In the last few years, I have been working on South African history as well as on British and Imperial history -- and this project offers a way to unite these fields by looking at the different ways in which autobiography and biography have been written in very different contexts. I sometimes think that the title of the first book that will be published from the grant will be called: 'The Writing of biography from Samuel Johnson to Nelson Mandela'."
An indication of the diversity and depth within the arts faculty can be seen in the grant given to Professor Neville Nicholls, from the School of Geography and Environmental Science. Professor Nicholls is also the recipient of an ARC Professorial Fellowship.
The title of his project is, Scientific basis for improved climate predictions on seasonal and climate-change timescales.
The project's summary states, in part, that it would lead to improved accuracy of Australian climate predictions, leading to benefits in many sectors.
Increasing the accuracy of seasonal climate predictions across March-May, a crucial time for decision making in Australian agriculture but a time when Professor Nicholls says the forecasts exhibit little skill, would lead to large economic/societal benefits.
"Despite the enormous advances we have made in climate science in recent years, there remain some tough problems that require a concerted and strategic attack, if we are to solve them," Professor Nicholls said.
"These include improving our methods for predicting seasonal tropical cyclone activity, and working out why we struggle to predict Australian rainfall across autumn -- our climate forecast skill is very low at this time of the year.
"The ARC Professorial Fellowship will allow me to use modern climate models and data to attack these fundamental problems. If we can solve them it will help us adapt to the current climate, and to climate change." | 
