December 2024

12 December 2024

On a personal level, it has been incredibly gratifying to spend my first year at an institution that has such a long tradition of making a positive impact in the community. It’s been a privilege to see firsthand the passion and commitment our staff bring to La Trobe’s mission every day. There’s no doubt that we have a very strong university culture where staff really live the La Trobe cultural qualities of care, accountability, connectedness and innovation.

The La Trobe spirit and ethos has been evident since my first day at the University on 5 February. It was special indeed to be welcomed by so many colleagues at my first official event, a wonderful Welcome to Country ceremony at the Bundoora campus presided by University Elder Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin AO. Since then, the dedication that staff bring to our work with communities across Victoria has been evident in every meeting, project launch, webinar and event I’ve attended. It is inspiring to work alongside colleagues that have such a deep commitment to our values and mission.

It was also a pleasure to attend my first Staff Awards ceremony earlier this week to celebrate some of the amazing projects and initiatives we have delivered in 2024. Congratulations to everyone who won an award or was highly commended for their work, and to all who were nominated. And thanks to everyone who took the time to nominate their colleagues. We can all be very proud of the extraordinary results we produced this year, many of which are detailed below. This included achieving our highest ever position of 217 in the QS World University Rankings, an outstanding result that reflects the effort and impact of every staff member at the University.

The transformative power of our work was also evident in two significant national awards La Trobe received this year. Our Nexus teacher education program, led by Joanna Barbousas and Miriam Tanti, won the Future Builder Award in the inaugural Universities Australia Shaping Australia Awards; and the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department, our collaboration with Northern Health led by James Boyd, won the Australian Financial Review Higher Education Award for Industry Engagement. There is intense competition for these awards from across Australia. Well done to all involved – as well as the La Trobe finalists in several other categories of both award programs.

We also have a finalist in Universities Australia’s 2024 Shaping Australia Awards that will be announced next February. MedTech company AlleSense, which was created to support the commercialisation of the NanoMslide technology invented by La Trobe researchers Brian Abbey and Eugeniu Balaur, is a finalist for the Shaping Australia Problem Solver Award. Don’t forget to vote for AlleSense in the People’s Choice category!

Our achievements in 2024 were all the more impressive when one considers the challenges faced by La Trobe and the Australian higher education sector this year, particularly in relation to issues with the processing of visas for international students. As I have noted in some of my blogs during the year and discussed at our all-staff webinars, our operating environment has necessitated the review of some of our academic and operational activities and priorities during the year. We have done this so that we can establish the foundations for future growth and ensure we are better placed to withstand future pressures. Once again, I acknowledge that this has not been easy. I thank all of our staff for their patience and commitment to La Trobe during 2024 and encourage colleagues to seek support through our staff wellbeing services as needed.

I’d now like to celebrate a few more of the year’s achievements.

Leading lights

Some La Trobe luminaries and emerging stars were recognised this year.

Marg O’Rourke was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the King's Birthday 2024 Honours List for significant contributions to the Bendigo community.

Julie Andrews was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women as a Trailblazer.

Bec Strating was named a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Foreign Affairs; and Marija Tabain was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Pam Snow was named one of Australia’s five most powerful people in education in 2024 by the Australian Financial Review in recognition of her influence and impact in co-founding the Science of Language and Reading (SOLAR) Lab with Tanya Serry.

Sean Mulcahy and Kate Seear won the 2024 Andrea Durbach Prize for Human Rights Scholarship.

Jane Mills was named the Rural/Remote Health Advocate of the Year at the 2024 National Rural and Remote Health Awards.

Emmanuel Kuntsche received the 2024 Mentor Award from the Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs.

Adam Culvenor was awarded an International Rising Star Award at the Osteoarthritis Research Society International World Congress on Osteoarthritis held in Vienna.

Kay Crossley won the inaugural Allied Health Research Impact Award presented by the Australian Council of Deans of Health Sciences.

Julian Pakay won the 2024 Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology SDR Scientific Education Award for his contributions to teaching quantitative literacy in biomedical science.

Leah Brennan received the Australian Psychological Society’s Significant Contribution to Rural and Remote Communities Award.

Miranda Rose was awarded the Robin Tavistock 2024 award for her contributions to aphasia research.

Vanessa Ratten, Dinh Phan, Ian Marquette and Doug Fairlie were named as Australian Research Field Leaders by The Australian.

Carrie Tiffany won the 2024 Writers Prize for her essay Seven Snakes, which was awarded as part of the Melbourne Prize for Literature.

Peter Brukner won the Outstanding Contribution to Victorian Sport Award at the State Government’s 2024 Victorian Sport Awards and was named the 2025 Senior Australian of the Year for Victoria.

What an amazing run of awards and recognition for La Trobe staff! Warm congratulations to all.

Research excellence

We performed very strongly in Australian Research Council (ARC) and health and medical funding schemes this year.
It was terrific to end the year with the recent announcement that nine La Trobe projects have received $5.73 million in funding under the ARC Discovery Project scheme. Congratulations to Marco Herold, Marija Tabain, Andy Herries, Jason Dutton, Nick Reynolds, Dean Murphy, Jodi Oakman, Kirsty Forsdike and Piers Gooding.

Roland Burke and Thomas H Ford won prestigious ARC Future Fellowships this year; and Caitlin Gionfriddo and Michelle Richards won funding under the highly competitive ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) scheme.
Three teams led by La Trobe researchers were awarded funding under the ARC Linkage Program that supports projects with industry partners, community organisations, and other research agencies. Heloise Gibb is leading a conservation project with Zoos Victoria, the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Australian Museum, and South Australian Museum; Chris Maylea is leading a project on legal service delivery with Legal Aid Commissions in New South Wales, Victoria, and the Northern Territory; and Grant van Riessen is leading a project to develop a scalable manufacturing process with quantum computing hardware company Quantum Brilliance.

Andrew Scott received a $1.2 million National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Development Grant; the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute and the La Trobe School of Cancer Medicine received a $5 million NHMRC Synergy Grant to investigate colorectal cancer treatment resistance; Della Forster received $999,585 under the NHMRC Targeted Call for Research funding round for her team’s research into maternal and infant care; and Katherine Harding is leading a project with the Eastern Health Institute that was awarded $1.46 million from the NHMRC Partnership Project scheme.

Three La Trobe University projects also received a total of $3.25 million under the NHMRC Ideas Grant scheme. Well done to project leaders Kazuhide Shaun Okuda; Yuning Hong and Paul Fisher; and Conor Kearney.

Eight La Trobe researchers were awarded $14.4 million under the NHMRC Investigator Grant scheme. Congratulations to Brian Abbey, Ivan Poon, Danilo de Oliveira Silva, Ebony Monson, Stephanie Gras, Amy Dennett, Matthias Ernst and Conor Kearney.

La Trobe’s Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS) was awarded $2 million from the Federal Government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) to lead a research project on the role and impact of mental health and alcohol or drug services and programs delivered by LGBTIQ+ community-controlled organisations in Australia.

John Pierce won a $565,000 grant from the MRFF to lead trials of a new treatment for people who develop the communication disability aphasia after a stroke.

Leesa Hooker is leading a project that received $7.45 million in funding from the Federal Department of Social Services that aims to identify the most effective sexual violence prevention programs.

And our School of Education received $7.4 million in Federal Government funding to extend its award-winning Nexus teacher education program to secondary teaching in New South Wales, following its successful introduction to NSW primary schools in July, which was launched by Federal Education Minister Jason Clare.

Future impact

We can be confident about continuing to deliver impactful research in the years ahead following the opening of several important centres in 2024.

Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas launched the Australian Centre for AI in Medical Innovation that is located within the Research and Innovation Precinct on our Bundoora campus. It’s the world’s first university innovation centre specialising in the application of AI to accelerate the discovery and development of immunotherapies, vaccines and other medical innovations.

The Minister for Precincts and Development Victoria, Colin Brooks, launched our new Bio Innovation Hub that is supporting early-stage biotechnology and agri-technology businesses. It is located in the former Thomas Cherry Building along with our Digital Innovation Hub, which was renamed the Jenny Graves Building in honour of our Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow and internationally renowned geneticist.

We formally launched the La Trobe Institute for Sustainable Agriculture and Food developed by Tony Bacic, which will deliver solutions for nutritious food production around the world.

We held fantastic events in Melbourne and Mildura to launch the Gabra Biik, Wurruwila Wutja Indigenous Research Centre, a key pillar of our Indigenous Strategy.

Led by Julie Andrews, the Centre will create and expand Indigenous community research and focus on projects that promote cultural exchange and learning. We’re currently accepting applications for the inaugural Wurruwila Wutja Research Fellowship, a research-only position in any discipline that will be closely linked with Gabra Biik.

La Trobe also received $9.37 million under the ARC Industrial Transformation Research Program to establish two new research hubs in areas of national importance, which are being established with industry partners. Tony Bacic will lead a new Research Hub for Protected Cropping; and Conor Hogan will lead establishment of a Research Hub for Molecular Biosensors at Point-of-Use.

Finally, we celebrated 50 years of nursing education at La Trobe with events in Bundoora and Bendigo. We’re opening state-of-the-art nursing clinical simulation suites at every campus as part of our $170 million investment in health innovation and education. With investments like this, we’ll be able to train an extra 5,000 health students by 2030.

To date, we’ve held terrific events with local health services, MPs and community stakeholders to launch new clinical nursing labs in Albury-Wodonga and Mildura, where the new nursing wing is named after La Trobe’s first Mildura-based employee, former head of campus Deb Neal. We’ll be opening the new nursing suites in Shepparton in the new year.

Partners that matter

We made significant progress during 2024 in our mission to work with industry and community partners to address challenges facing our region and the world.

We developed plans to expand activities with current industry and university partners in India, including increasing the scale and scope of the Asian Smart Cities Research Innovation Network led by Ani Desai. The Network also won the 2024 Excellence in Partnerships award presented by the India Australia Business and Community Alliance.

We signed agreements to support establishment of a Bio Innovation Corridor between India and Melbourne with the Bangalore Bio Innovation Centre, supported by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council, an Indian Government agency in New Delhi. The Innovation Corridor will support sharing of biotechnology skills, infrastructure and capabilities, and pilot novel applications across human health, medical, food, and AgTech projects.

We strengthened our partnership with Healthscope with the opening of the new La Trobe Private Hospital that is providing clinical placements for Nursing, Allied Health and Health Information Management students, and supporting research activity.

We signed a partnership agreement with the Asia Foundation that will help address challenges in the Indo-Pacific, which builds on collaborative projects undertaken with the Foundation by the Centre for Human Security and Social Change led by Chris Roche.

Dennis Altman, Noel Maloney, Timothy Jones and Alexis Harley led an extraordinary collaboration with The Australian Ballet’s dancers and artistic team to help develop a world-first production about the life and writings of Oscar Wilde. Clare Wright also convened a sold-out discussion about the collaboration at the State Library of Victoria.

And last month, in an Australian-first, we announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft (Australia and New Zealand) and CyberCX to support implementation of our Responsible AI Adoption Strategy through guest lecturers, industry participation, scholarships, skills programs, funding for digital transformation, and industry-recognised certifications and micro credentials.

Learning and teaching excellence

We received three Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning at the Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT). These prestigious awards recognise exemplary work and leadership to improve the student experience and enhance learning outcomes. Well done to Hosu Ryu, Minh Huynh, David Carey, Matthew Varley, Haresh Suppiah, Paul Gastin, Vipul Patel and Haider Al Abadi.

La Trobe performed strongly in the national Graduate Outcomes Survey – Longitudinal released during the year, being ranked first in Victoria for the number of undergraduate students and postgraduate research students employed full-time three years after graduation.
And we achieved accreditation from UK-based Advance HE, which means we can offer our own Higher Education Academy Fellowship program to support advancements in teaching practice at La Trobe. Dan Bendrups was also appointed as a Principal Fellow with Advance HE, the highest recognition that can be achieved within the scheme.

Our students also shone on the global stage this year.

Two undergraduate students from the La Trobe Business School, Ethan Mulligan and Salma Salaat, served as delegates at the Humanitarian Affairs Asia 3rd Global Peace Summit in Thailand.

The La Trobe Law School’s Nuremberg Moot Court team finished in the top 16 at the 2024 Nuremberg Moot Court Competition in Germany, after being one of 40 teams selected from 144 entrants around the world to compete at the historic Courtroom 600 of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice. Congratulations to our students Hassan Asad, Mohamad Dannaoui, Liam Crough, and Jade Sheppard, and their lecturer and team coach, Kirtan Swamy.

We launched projects that help students develop practical skills and industry experience and, at the same time, help the community. Andrew Giles, the Federal Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, launched a La Trobe Law School clinic in Whittlesea that provides free legal services for those in need.

Pleasingly, there was a 32 per cent increase in the number of Indigenous students commencing their studies at La Trobe this year following the implementation of programs developed by the Office of Indigenous Strategy and Education, including our fantastic RISE with La Trobe Indigenous pathway program. And 35 First Nations students joined the University with an accommodation scholarship in 2024. Well done to Michael Donovan and his team.

Finally, the Federal Government selected La Trobe as the home for one of its 10 Suburban University Study Hubs. Our Hub will be established with partners including Hume City Council, Bendigo Kangan Institute, and Melbourne Polytechnic across facilities at the City of Hume’s offices in Broadmeadows and at Melbourne Polytechnic’s campus in Epping. Each facility will be available to students studying at any university and will provide study spaces and support to help more people from Melbourne’s north to participate and succeed in higher education.

Sustainability

During 2024, the University continued to demonstrate leadership in helping to create a sustainable future.

We rose more than 200 places in the 2024 QS Sustainability Ranking to be ranked 166th globally on measures of universities’ environmental impact, social impact, and governance.

Earlier this week, it was announced that La Trobe has been ranked 145 in the 2025 QS Sustainability Ranking, a further rise of 21 places.

And a project based around our Nangak Tamboree Wildlife Sanctuary won the Nature Positive award at the 2024 Australasian Green Gown Awards. It was terrific to see our collaboration with the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation to implement innovative practices in land management, cultural burning, waterway health and species conservation recognised in this way.

Public engagement

Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow Robert Manne curated a strong Ideas and Society program in 2024, the 15th year he has presented the series. The events featured some of Australia’s most respected thinkers discussing issues including the nation’s housing crisis, institutional child sexual abuse, the scourge of domestic violence and the referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Robert’s brilliant political memoir, Intellectual Combat in the Cold War and the Culture Wars, has just been published by La Trobe University Press and has garnered significant press coverage around the country, demonstrating Robert’s standing as one of Australia’s leading public intellectuals. ANU historian Frank Bongiorno described the book as “essential reading for anyone interested in what has happened to politics and ideas in this country since World War II”. It also contains rich details about La Trobe’s early years, including the characters and preoccupations of our founding academic staff, as well as vivid descriptions of some of the political protests on campus in the 1970s.

La Trobe Asia’s 2024 seminar series was essential viewing for anyone interested in events shaping our region. The series covered political and security issues, as well as discussions about democracy, identity, history and social issues across Asia. La Trobe Asia also co-presented an event with the Ideas and Society program about the AUKUS agreement.

The La Trobe Art Institute (LAI) presented some thought-provoking exhibitions during the year under its new Director, Karen Annett. Highlights included Pliable Planes, an exhibition of works that reimagined practices in textiles and fibre art; and the biannual façade commission at the LAI on View Street in Bendigo by Roberta Joy Rich, Lying Inside, which considers the repatriation of cultural materials and institutional responsibility for accessing, archiving, and administering objects. Lying Inside runs until 19 January 2025.

The LAI’s current exhibition, Parched, is a research-led exhibition that runs until 9 February 2025.

Parched explores representations of drought and was co-curated by Jacqueline Millner from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Parched is dedicated to the memory of the LAI’s much-loved Gallery Officer, Robbie Dixon.

The University sponsored the Australian Muslim Artists Art Prize for a sixth consecutive year in 2024, which is an important element in our partnership with the Islamic Museum of Australia. Karen Annett was a member of the judging panel that awarded this year’s prize to Rosalind Noor for her work The Sovereign, which is being exhibited at the Museum’s site in Thornbury until 1 March 2025.

La Trobe University Press also had another very strong year. There’s no doubt we’re delivering on our mission to produce books of high intellectual quality, substance, and originality.

Our books also made the shortlists of many important national literary awards – with several works recognised with prizes.

Marek Kowalkiewicz’s book The Economy of Algorithms: AI and the Rise of the Digital Minions received a silver medal at the 2024 Independent Publishers Book Awards for the best work addressing current social or humanitarian issues and won the Teachnology category of the Australian Business Book Awards.

Bina: First Nations Languages, Old and New won the 2024 Talkley Award for Best Linguistic Communication.

My Tongue Is My Own, Ann-Marie Priest’s biography of poet Gwen Harwood, won the Magarey Medal for Biography at the 2024 Australian Historical Association awards.

Ryan Cropp’s biography Donald Horne: A Life in the Lucky Country won the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Australian History.

Alecia Simmonds’ Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law won the Australian History Prize in the 2024 NSW Premier’s History Awards as well as the Australian Historical Association’s 2024 WK Hancock Prize, the 2024 Australian Legal Research Award for a Book, and the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society's 2024 Annual Prize in Legal History.

And there was a packed house at Readings bookshop in Carlton for the launch of the La Trobe University Press book co-authored by La Trobe Asia’s Bec Strating, Girt by Sea. The book makes the case for a holistic view of regional security and was launched in Adelaide by Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong. Well done, Bec!

Congratulations to these authors and our publishing partners at Black Inc. on the continued success of La Trobe University Press.

Speaking of literary achievements, our Professor of Public Engagement, Clare Wright, had a typically productive year. Amongst other things, Clare co-curated the 2024 Bendigo Writers Festival, which featured a series of ‘La Trobe presents’ discussions; she presented a new Literary La Trobe podcast as well as the sixth season of her podcast with La Trobe history colleague Yves Rees, Archive Fever; she partnered with the University of Technology Sydney to produce Hey History, a podcast about Australian history mapped to the Australian curriculum that is in the top five per cent most listened podcasts globally; and she was appointed as Chair of the Council of the National Museum of Australia. If that wasn’t enough, Clare published the final instalment in her ‘democracy trilogy’. Näku Dhäruk The Bark Petitions: How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy has achieved wide acclaim and appears on many notable ‘best books of 2024’ lists.

Professional excellence

While many of the staff mentioned above are academics, they couldn’t do what they do without the magnificent support they receive from our professional and support staff. From our teams in IS, the Research Office, Finance, and HR to colleagues that plan and manage orientation and enrolment, examinations, and graduations; those that provide student support, advising and systems support; and our fantastic Advancement, Events and Future Growth teams – you’ve done a brilliant job this year.

We can all take pride in our collective achievements, including those of our professional staff who have been recognised by their peers.

I’d like to mention Paul Spizzirri, who was awarded the Association for Tertiary Education Management (ATEM) 2024 Award for Excellence in Management for his contributions to making savings under the University’s health portfolio innovation capital works program; and Helen Slaney, who received the RMIT Paul Taylor Award at the 2024 Australasian Research Management Society conference for creating a project database that enables researchers to document the impact resulting from externally funded research.

Well done to Paul and Helen and all of the professional staff that manage our systems and processes so effectively and provide incredible support for the learning, teaching, research and engagement activities across our campus network.

In closing

It’s been an incredibly productive year at La Trobe University in 2024. It has been an honour to commence my term as Vice-Chancellor and be part of a university that has a positive impact on the lives of so many individuals, families and communities.

Congratulations on everything you have achieved this year. Above all, thank you for your hard work and dedication to our wonderful university. Have a much-deserved break over summer. I look forward to working with you in 2025.

Best wishes,
Theo