Leading Team: Nicholas Morris, Sue Jaffer and Louis de Koker

International banks have been terminating correspondent banking relationships (CBRs) with Pacific Island nations, in part due to concerns about money laundering, terrorist financing and corruption risks. CBRs are vital, as they enable cross-border payments. Some nations have lost their last CBR and have been cut off from the international financial system. The loss of these relationships has adverse consequences for international trade by these countries, impacts on the ability of seasonal and migrant workers abroad to remit money to their families, and undermines social and economic development.

The Pacific Islands Forum requested the World Bank to prepare a report on CBR terminations in the Pacific and recommendations on how to improve the situation. The team of authors included La Trobe’s Nicholas Morris, Sue Jaffer and Louis de Koker. In order to support the PIF’s implementation of the report’s recommendations with immediate effect, the World Bank developed a CBR Roadmap to reconnect Pacific Island states with the global banking network within two years. It has been kickstarted in 2024 by an initial World Bank investment of USD $68m in credit and grant funding, providing short-term relief for the countries that lose a CBR in a key currency and supporting the implementation of the Roadmap to provide long-term solutions.

Read the report

Leading Team: Dennis Altman, Timothy Jones, Alexis Harley, Noel Maloney

In 2024, the Australian Ballet took on the challenge of representing the life story of Oscar Wilde – author of Dorian Gray, flamboyant aesthete, and victim of a society that did not recognise the legitimacy of same-sex relationships – in what is typically a strictly heteronormative art form. As such, Oscar represented an innovative commission for the Australian Ballet, with the potential to attract alternative audience demographics. La Trobe researchers in the history of sexuality were invited to collaborate with the creative team behind Oscar to unpack the context of Wilde’s oeuvre and persecution.

A background paper was prepared for the Ballet, which became the basis for the publication of The Importance of Being Oscar. This companion volume contextualised the production through a historically informed queer reading of Wilde’s career. Dr Timothy Jones conducted a workshop with the cast and production team, which allowed the dancers to better understand the roles they were portraying. Broadening this consultative role, the La Trobe team took part in a public panel discussion featuring Artistic Director David Hallberg at the State Library of Victoria which was attended by a capacity audience of 200.

On the collaboration, Hallberg commented, ‘It was through our partnership with La Trobe University that we were able to really dive in deep and become educated about what society was like in the 1890s […] Behind every step in Wheeldon’s choreography is a depth of research into the life of Oscar Wilde and what it would have been like to live as a queer man in 1890s London.’

Read more about the role of La Trobe’s team

Leading Team: Adrian Farrugia

Whilst there have been significant advances in the testing, treatment and prevention of blood-borne viruses (BBV) and sexually transmissible infections (STI) in the past decade, stigma and discrimination continue to discourage people from seeking testing, treatment and support. With funding from the Victorian Department of Health, Adrian Farrugia and a team from La Trobe’s Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS) worked with healthcare professionals and community organisations to develop a stigma reduction toolkit for the Victorian BBV and STI healthcare workforce. The toolkit forms part of the training delivered by the Australian College for Infection Prevention and Control, is listed under the best practice guidelines of the Victorian HIV and Hepatitis Integrated Training and Learning program (VHHITAL), and is a listed resource of the Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM), the peak professional body representing healthcare professionals in HIV, BBV, and sexual and reproductive health.  ASHM are currently putting together a GP training module, to be launched in the near future, that uses the ARCSHS website and toolkit. In March 2024, ARCSHS ran a toolkit implementation workshop involving over 100 professionals from Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

Stigma Reduction Toolkit

Leading Team: Emma Henderson and Kirsty Duncanson

‘Rape myths’ are social narratives that have the effect of negating claims of rape. Despite increasingly specific legislative language aimed at challenging rape myths within trials, research led by La Trobe’s Emma Henderson and Kirsty Duncanson has shown that traditional myth-based narratives continue to resonate strongly and influence jury decision-making, shaping the meaning of consent in trials and the way in which juries process information. Their research shows that these myths are circulated by barristers in rape trials, and that Law School core curricula do not adequately address the issue of rape myths and other contextual information about sexual offences.

These findings formed the basis of their submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry into Current and Proposed Sexual Consent Laws in Australia, following which Henderson and Duncanson were invited to stand as expert witnesses at a committee hearing and to respond to submissions made by Liberty Victoria and the Law Council of Australia, amongst others. The recommendations of their submission are reflected in recommendation 11 of the 2023 final report, which states that ‘The committee recommends that the Attorney-General’s Department, in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Judicial Administration and other relevant stakeholders, develops and delivers a National Sexual Violence Bench Book…[which] should specifically address rape myths and misconceptions’.

Read the Senate Report recommendations

Leading Team:  Bec Strating and Kate Clayton

The Indo-Pacific region is vital to Australia’s interests, home to many coastal states, some of the world’s busiest shipping routes, valuable resources such as energy and fish, and complex territorial, maritime and strategic disputes and contestation. Blue Security, initiated and led by La Trobe Asia director Professor Bec Strating, is a consortium of six Australian institutes (Griffith Asia Institute, University of Western Australia Defence and Security Institute, United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, UNSW Canberra and Asia Pacific 4D) funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) which brings together leading regional experts in politics, international law and strategic studies to focus on three key pillars of maritime security in the Indo-Pacific: order, law and power. Blue Security’s Senior Coordinator (Programs & Research) Kate Clayton runs the emerging leaders plank of the program, which supports Early Career Researchers across Australia and Southeast Asia in developing their networks and expertise and refining skills in public communication.

As part of Blue Security, Strating has served as the Australian academic lead on eight Track 1.5 dialogues (when government representatives and non-governmental experts engage in dialogue) since 2021, and has delivered three bilateral track 1.5 maritime security dialogues for the Australian government with Southeast Asian counterparts, working alongside DFAT, the Foreign Ministries of Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, and partner organisations such as the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, University of Philippines, CSIS Jakarta and ISIS Malaysia. Strating’s role in these track 1.5 dialogues offers a unique opportunity to prioritise topics and provide recommendations for the agendas of the Australian and Southeast Asian states. According to DFAT, Blue Security has ‘delivered increased policy relevant maritime scholarship… [and] strengthened networks between Australian and Southeast Asian maritime experts, think tanks and academics’.

In August 2023, the Blue Security consortium was approached by the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet topartner on its ASEAN-Australia Maritime Cooperation Track, held 3-4 March 2024, as part of the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit. This comprised public and track 1.5 events, including keynote speakers (Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Philippines’ Secretary of State Enrique Manalo), experts and practitioners from across ASEAN and Australia, and showcased Blue Security research and publications. The outcomes included ‘enhanced maritime cooperation, supporting implementation of the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific and ASEAN Maritime Outlook to develop the knowledge, skills and confidence in maritime enforcement roles’.

Not only does Blue Security provide a platform for improved cross-sectoral dialogue and the delivery of capacity-building programs for Early Career Researchers, it also advances the representation of women as maritime security experts – something which Strating promotes through her role as Chair of the Women in International Security Australia Steering Group Committee. In May 2024, Strating served as Australia’s representative at the ASEAN Regional Forum Eminent and Expert Persons Meeting in Seoul. Later that month, Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, launched Girt by Sea, co-authored by Strating and Professor Joanne Wallis from the University of Adelaide, in Adelaide. Wong has described the book as a powerful contribution to security discourses in Australia. Captain AJW Cooper, Director, Sea Power Centre, Royal Australian Navy writes that ‘Professor Strating is a significant and influential academic partner for the Australian Defence Force. Her ability to communicate with authority, passion, and influence makes a significant difference, contributing to professional military education and national strategic policy discussion’. Strating was a finalist in the 2024 Australian Financial Review Emerging Leader in Higher Education Award. Clayton has also demonstrated her credentials as an Early Career Researcher operating across policy, academic and public engagement domains, including through her participation in the U.S. State Department’s prestigious International Visitor Leadership Program in 2023, her collaborative work with organisations such as the Kubernein Initiative in India and YCAPS in Japan, and as one of Australia’s top 25 Young Women to Watch in International Affairs in 2024.

Read more on the Blue Security website

Edith Cowan University, South West Campus

Leading team: Professor Robyn Eversole (Bucknell University, USA), Dr Lucinda Aberdeen (La Trobe), Dr Colleen Carlon (ECU), Dr Merete Schmidt (UTAS)

Residents of Regional Australia enter and complete university at lower rates than metropolitan students and are half as likely to hold a university qualification, pointing to a clear inequity in the distribution of higher education. The Studying Regionally research project, funded by the US-based Spencer Foundation, was a collaboration between La Trobe, the University of Tasmania, Edith Cowan and Bucknell University USA, investigating the experiences of regional university students in Australia and what they reveal about equity and inequity in Australian higher education. The findings of the project drew attention to particular challenges for regional students, including the existence of intersecting categories of disadvantage (low socioeconomic status, first-in-family university students, migrant and refugee backgrounds). And these findings formed part of a submission to the Australian Universities Accord, a 12-month, $2.7 million review of Australia’s higher education system to improve its quality, accessibility, affordability and sustainability, with Chapter 7 focussed on ‘Serving the regions through tertiary education’. The project’s identification of the vital role played by regional campuses in helping equity students overcome barriers to study was also outlined in Invisible innovation: Intellectual labour on regional university campuses in Australia (link below). The paper, which argues that metrocentric measures of academic output ignore the distinctive nature of working at regional university campuses, has informed debate amongst senior university leaders on regional campuses about how academic labour is and could be measured and evaluated.

Invisible innovation: Intellectual labour on regional university campuses in Australia

Leading Team: Caroline Spry

Significant dhabuganha (burials of Wiradjuri men of high standing and women) were known to be located on a travelling stock reserve in the Central Tablelands, marked by carved trees (marara) or Aboriginal scarred trees. However, as the original burial features had been eroded since colonisation, the precise location of the burials was unknown. Central Tablelands Local Land Services engaged La Trobe archaeologist Dr Caroline Spry to assist with identifying the burial sites in order to provide better protection and conservation.

As well as consulting historical records, Spry collaborated closely with local Wiradjuri Elders and community members to record traditional cultural knowledge about burial practices and the relationship of the marara to the surrounding landscape. Using non-invasive techniques such as ground-penetrating radar avoided disturbance of the sites. 3D models of the marara and dhabuganha have now been stored in a digital archive for Elder-led teaching in the community. Wiradjuri Traditional Custodian and Aboriginal Communities Officer at Central Tablelands Local Land Services Greg Ingram comments, “This has been an exciting opportunity and partnership for an Aboriginal led science project with the Wiradjuri Elders directing western science to support their existing cultural knowledge.”

Read more about the research behind the impact

Leading Team: Adam Bourne

Private Lives is a period survey conducted by the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS) at La Trobe University. It collects essential data on the health and wellbeing of LGBTIQ+ people in Australia.

The first iteration of Private Lives in 2005 was the largest survey of its kind anywhere in the world, and was followed by surveys in 2011 and 2020, providing a unique longitudinal dataset recognised by the Australian Institute of Health & Welfare (AIHW) as the longest running, ‘largest and most comprehensive available for the LGBTQ+ population in Australia’.

Private Lives exposed for the first time the previously hidden realities around the health and wellbeing of LGBTIQ+ people in Australia including significant health and social disparities: higher rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, attempted suicide, poverty and homelessness. In 2020, this data was used to identify LGBTIQ+ people as a priority population for mental health and suicidality for the first time in Australia. Commonwealth and state or territory health strategies must now tailor initiatives to specifically address and improve health equity for the LGBTIQ+ community as a priority population group.

As a unique data source, Private Lives underpins the development of state and federal polices, strategies, commissions and action plans which affect the LGBTQA+ community. These include The Disability Royal Commission (which includes ‘original research [commissioned] from La Trobe University on the experience of LGBTQA+ people with disability’), the Victorian LGBTIQA+ Strategy: Pride in our future, the NSW LGBTIQ+ Health Strategy and the ACT’s Capital of Equality Strategy: Second Action Plan.

Director of ARCSHS Adam Bourne is co-chair of the Victorian Government’s LGBTIAQ+ whole of government Taskforce and is also a member of the expert advisory group which will co-design the federal government’s first 10 year National Action Plan, announced in March 2023, focused specifically on improving the health and wellbeing of LGBTIQA+ people.

As the largest and longest running survey of its kind, the data from Private Lives offers a unique mechanism for evaluating the progress and impact of changes in policy and practice over time. In 2023, ARCSHS provided AIHW with data on suicide and self-harm from Private Lives 3 and Writing Themselves In 4, aggregated by state/territory, age-group, gender and sexual orientation. In addition, the AIHW has engaged ARCSHS to undertake secondary analysis of the data from PL3 and WTI4. This aggregated data is now accessible for the public, policy makers and practitioners.

Visit the AIHW site

Leading Team: Phillip Edwards

For over 20 years, Edwards’ team have been investigating the origins of sedentary human settlement in the Jordan Valley. The site of Wadi Hammeh 27 has recently revealed a spectacular multiple burial, dated to 12,500 BCE. Eight interments have been identified since 2022, accompanied by bone and shell jewellery.  It is the richest multiple burial of the period discovered in 70 years. The site has also yielded intact caches of items, including a well-preserved tool-bag, and a series of basaltic pestles and mortars. Wadi Hammeh 27 is also significant for the world’s earliest example of freestanding sculpture, identified as representing aspects of a ‘tortoise cult’. Material from Edwards’ excavations is now exhibited in six Jordanian museums, including the recently opened Jordan Museum, where a reconstruction is located in the first of the museum’s grand galleries. Located close to Jordan’s borders with Syria, Israel and the Palestinian West Bank, Wadi Hammeh 27 has also promoted international collaboration and stability, hosting diplomatic visits from Australian and Jordanian political figures. Collaborations with Jordanian colleagues, including the country’s first luminescence lab, have also strengthened bilaterial relations, while community involvement in the dig has resulted in positive cultural interchange at the local level.

Wadi Hammeh 27, an Early Natufian Settlement at Pella in Jordan