Monash University

This thesis develops a 3-D modelling framework that determines exact location and pattern of buildings, detailed information of their roofs, and generate computer-based 3-D building models. The proposed framework has utilisation in a range of applications, such as city planning, disaster management, urban modelling, and virtual reality. In addition, this thesis provides an automated system for large-scale assessment of the solar potential for industrial and govt energy businesses.

In the following essay I will be discussing two excerpts from Gilles Deleuze’s Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, in relation to Franz Kafka’s short story “The Metamorphosis”. In short the story is about a man named Gregor Samsa who turns into a “vermin” (Kafka’s word) or a big bug from the description in the text, one morning. As the story progresses we see how his life and that of his family dramatically changes, with the passing of time the situation becomes more difficult and more emotionally charged.

This paper examines Nick Land’s “numbering practices” for opening up language to modernity’s increasing technological entanglement beyond human comprehension. I begin by examining Land’s attempt to override our linguistic systems with machinic code and binary symbolism in a way which mirrors modernity’s technological future shock. I then consider his appropriation of Cantor’s set theory and Godel’s incompleteness theorem to plot ever greater degrees of reality’s excess to all anthropic logic. The third section looks at Land’s use of qabbalistic numerology to uncover the absolute contingency of all our most strongly held beliefs, truths and values. The fourth section considers Land’s radicalisation of qabbalism through his own particularly abstract and inhuman notational “gematria.” I conclude by looking at Land’s interest in the computer keyboard’s lock-in to the QWERTY layout for proffering a glimpse of modern technology’s increasingly dehumanising meltdown of our anthropocentric d...

Focusing on the themes of culture and e-learning 2.0, this study provides a Grounded Theory exploration of the experience of Saudi Arabian students in Australia. The research was conducted because a growing number of Saudi Arabian students chose to pursue their studies abroad in countries with very different cultural and educational environments such as Australia, and there is little in the literature that focuses on Saudi Arabian students’ experiences, specifically with new learning settings. The study aims to explore the experiences of Saudi Arabian higher education students in Australia and the opportunities and challenges that emerge from these experiences. An essential part of this research is discovering the role of culture in shaping attitudes and experiences of Saudi Arabian male and female students within an Australian e-learning 2.0 higher education environment. A qualitative approach based on Charmaz’s Constructivist Grounded Theory approach was adopted to allow the participants to describe their experiences and to analyse the gathered data. Three theoretical underpinnings based on cultural, educational and technological theoretical perspectives, were used to understand the data gathered. Twenty Saudi Arabian higher education students sponsored by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education to study at Australian universities were surveyed and interviewed using semi-structured interviews. The twenty interviews were transcribed into 5000 lines of text and over 800 excerpt basic statements were subsequently extracted from the raw data. Through a line-by-line initial coding process, over 400 line-by-line initial codes emerged. Through the constant comparative method focusing on coding the relevant data, a reduced list of (38) initial codes emerged; these were identified as the most frequently repeated and relevant codes to address the research questions. The focused codes were categorised into three conceptual categories: ‘adaptation to the Australian cultural environment,’ ‛adaptation to the Australian education system,’ and ‘engagement in learning through technology.’ Each of the three categories was associated with a set of subcategories. Through the theoretical coding process, key theoretical concepts were drawn, and the conceptual categories and their interplay were specified and explained in a theoretical model. Key findings from the analysis indicated that: (i) Saudi Arabian students experienced a number of cultural and educational challenges while studying in the Australian higher education environment; (ii) Saudi Arabian students were able to utilise the e-learning 2.0 environment in their respective universities as a learning enabler to help them overcome some of their educational challenges. In an e-learning 2.0 environment, they were able to interact with other people while preparing themselves to become more interactive in their classes. The enabling affordances of the e-learning 2.0 environment also served as a learning facilitator where the students successfully engaged in, and adapted to, the Australian higher education environment. Furthermore, (iii) e-learning 2.0 platforms were utilised by the students as a sociocultural enabler, helping them to transcend some of the sociocultural challenges. However, for some participants, the language barriers, the gender segregation culture and the technology expertise persisted as intervening challenges even in the enabling e-learning 2.0 environment. The theoretical model developed in this study contributes to our understanding of international students’ experiences with, and attitudes towards an e-learning 2.0 environment and its role in their cultural and educational adaptation in a new setting.

This research project uses photography as an analogy to look at death and lament from a non-Christian perspective. Where religion sees death as infinite, transcendence from the limits of mortality, in a largely secular society such as Australia, death is the ultimate limit. I examine the arbitrariness of death, and then the personal loss of my father. I then investigate my relationship to death and my mortality, whilst using lamentation in my performative photographs.

Interactive choices have become popular in today's games and stories. But how do choices work? This thesis examines the 'choice' as a form of expression. Some choices are like a quiz - they have a right answer. Others exist to help you explore a story from different sides. However both of these underutilise the choice. This thesis argues that the best way to use the choice is as a tool for self-reflection. By saving a person's set of choices, a game or story can respond to them in a way that's unique and helps them to grow as a person.

This thesis focuses on the films of contemporary Palestinian filmmakers that have gained a considerable following among arthouse and commercial cinema audiences since the 1980s. Developing а concept of minor transnationalism, the thesis concentrates on the feature and documentary films of Michel Khleifi, Rashid Masharawi, Elia Suleiman, Hany Abu Assad, Najwa Najjar, Annemarie Jacir, Cherien Dabis, Azza El-Hassan, and Jumana Manna. This thesis investigates how we think about the evolution of Palestinian transnational cinema in the post-1980 period, and specifies the ways in which transnational film production engages with the minor form in the works of Palestinian film directors.

Is rapid global population growth a cause for alarm? In this essay I will show that global population growth is not a cause for alarm, but just another challenge that must be faced in the development of human thinking, creativity and society.

Those accustomed to Charles Bukowski's usual rant will find less of the offensive, misogynistic, bar-brawling alcoholism than usual here; but that doesn't mean it is entirely absent. A novel about the filming of the 1985 film Barfly, which starred Mickey Rourke in the days when he swaggered with a slanted, smart-aleck smile and hadn't yet undergone the transformation to boxing from which he recently returned (for The Wrestler, another fine performance) and Faye Dunaway. Bukowski, as he does in other works of "fiction," barely bothers concealing the inspiration behind his characters. Again he is Henry Chinaski, beaten down by the stupidities of human nature, but never beaten out of the game. The pseudonyms he chooses for others are sometimes merely slight changes of real names and usually the brief description gives the game away; hence we get characterisations of Sean Penn and Madonna, Norman Mailer, Francis Ford Coppola, David Lynch and Isobella Rossellini, an...

When studying abroad in different cultural and educational environments, international students face many opportunities and challenges. Focusing on the themes of culture and e-learning 2.0, this study explores the experiences of Saudi Arabian students in the Australian higher education environment. Through adopting the Grounded Theory approach, the research develops a theoretical model which contributes to understanding the students’ experiences with e-learning 2.0 while studying in Australia.

This thesis is a re-evaluation of commonly held assumptions on child and infant burials. It challenges the bias that often exists in the discussion of these individuals. In particular, the mortuary remains of non-elite children and infants are viewed by some researchers as crude burials, containing very few grave goods. According to this view they represent little economic outlay, were often interred elsewhere because of their lack of integration within their community, and were sometimes disposed of like garbage. To re-evaluate these views, a case study is undertaken of 127 non-elite child and infant burials from the New Kingdom cemeteries of Gurob. Specifically, funerary material is used to explore whether age impacted the degree to which an individual was considered a member of the community, based upon the location, type of burial container, and the grave goods included within the burial. This thesis argues that infants and children were treated as diversely as adults in the mor...

Almost a million Australians served in World War II. Military bands were, in many ways, the public face of the armed forces, performing in departure and welcome home ceremonies, recruitment drives and to pacify potential enemy sympathisers. Despite this, there has been little research conducted on mid-twentieth century Australian military band history. This thesis is the first study of the lives of Australia’s military musicians before, during and immediately after World War II. The period from 1930 to 1955 saw a marked change in the organisational structure of the Australian military generally and its band services specifically, as they transformed from a largely part-time force, to a fully professional service with long-term career structures for its members. Throughout this time of great change musicians serving in the Australian military were tasked with performing ceremonies aimed at reminding the population, military and civilian alike, of the longstanding traditions and ethos...

This thesis investigates biodiversity field education events and how teachers connect field and classroom studies to broaden and deepen student environmental learning. This thesis also investigated how field workshop facilitators and partnerships influence the development of student eco-literacy.

This article discusses how Emma Geen’s The Many Selves of Katherine North (2016), a contemporary work of science fiction, represents the construction of human and animal consciousness and selfhood, and the ways in which it adapts and subverts phenomenological principles (Levinas) in order to create the conditions for an ethics of alterity which includes the animal. In this context, this essay considers the ideas of language and communication presented in the work, as well as the limitations and the (mis)uses of the technology described. This article furthermore examines the manner in which Geen’s novel promotes the disruption of the human versus animal apparatus (Agamben) and, lastly, it considers the concept of subjectivity defined in the novel and how it allows for a new kind of human-animal relationship to be conceived.

There is a need for generalised definitions of electrical powers to provide a simultaneous common base for measurement, compensation, power quality and identification of source of distortion. The major problem area today is definitions of powers in the presence of harmonics and nonlinear loads in the electrical power system. In such a scenario, there is a problem to accurately measure especially reactive (nonactive) power. This is important for accurate energy billing. Another important area is the mitigation equipment used to remove unwanted polluting quantities from the power system. Definitions of powers have an important role to play in providing the correct information for the optimal design and performance of such equipment. Evaluation of the quality of the power system to enable appropriate allocation costs to those causing deterioration in the power quality also cannot be discounted. To enable this cost allocation, there is a need to identify the polluters and the definition...

Sri Sri Univeristy (SUS), a new age global university in the Eastern Indian state of Odisha has recruited Monash University researcher Mr. Kamala Kanta Dash to strengthen the university’s forthcoming Masters Programme in Good Governance and Public Policy. Kamala is currently an Australian Ambassador at the Parliament of World’s Religions (PWR) Chicago and a Carnegie New Leader (CNL) at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, New York.

Terrorism studies has an enduring puzzle: how do terrorist organisations grow, persist and survive? Using the Japanese new religion Aum Shinrikyo as a case study, this thesis posits that three causal mechanisms—cultural transmission, social learning, and folklore—affect terrorist organisations’ survivability, success, or failure. Original contributions to knowledge include a new analytical theory of strategic subcultures in terrorist organisations, new tests using the qualitative methodology of process tracing, and a new causal analysis of Aum Shinrikyo’s initiatory, religious sub-system (which facilitated founder Shoko Asahara’s paranoid delusions, leadership elite deviance, and follower indoctrinability). A new research agenda is also identified.

Through a focus on the criminal trial in the colony, and later, state of Victoria, this dissertation explores the operation of capital punishment as a system that allowed for popular readings of madness in relation to serious interpersonal crimes between 1880 and 1939. Insanity was increasingly used by ordinary people as a discursive tool by which to contest the death penalty, and in some cases, a means by which to protest the material circumstances that governed their lives.

This paper will explore arts-based educational research (ABER) as an effective and appropriate research method in the early years. It has been noted that the arts play an increasingly important role in the development of the child (Boone, 2008; Twigg, 2011a, 2011b; Twigg & Garvis, 2010; Wright, 2012). In fact McArdle and Wright (2014) call the arts children's first literacies. Research with young children can often be difficult given that they are often still developing their skills in communicating through language, whether oral or written. Other modes such as visual image through drawing, or audio through song, are innate skills that young children can use to communicate effectively. This paper will report on a number of projects that have used arts-based educational research methods with young children. It shows how much research, in the past, has often treated children as inferior participants, or in need of adult confirmation, whereas arts-based methods can be powerful plat...

This thesis investigates selected social determinants that contribute to the gap in health between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults who live in Victoria. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults disproportionately experience food insecurity, psychological distress, and racism. Experiences of racism account for 34% of the gap in self-reported health status, equivalent in strength to smoking. Racism in all its forms is hypothesised to be the pivotal determinant of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and a conceptual model is proposed.

This paper represents a key stage of Yee's PhD research. It outlines the data gathering that utilised a combination of empirical methods and action research projects to form a new conceptual framework for the understanding and practice of screen-based typography. It focuses on the research undertaken, the methodology used and the findings from two stages of the study. The paper concludes by outlining a new cross-typographic framework that Yee has developed. www.designdictator.com/drs04_jy.pdf. The research focuses on text-based communication in a multi-modal environment, typographic education for digital media and practice-based research methods for designers. Her consultancy work involves developing research-led design solutions for application across different delivery media. This includes understanding user and interaction issues and developing a human-centred approach to design problems. (e.g.: Yee, RAE Output 4; where surrogate users were explored as a research tool to elic...

International Association of Music Libraries, Archives & Documentation Centres (Australian Chapter) Conference Melbourne 2019

The Vera Bradford Collection: A Digitisation Project

Vera Bradford (1904-2004) was a celebrated Australian pianist, and contributed much to Australian music as a performer, a teacher and a promoter of Australian composers. She won a scholarship to study with Percy Grainger in Chicago, gave the first Australian performance of Gershwin’s Piano Concerto and was the first woman to perform the Brahms D minor Piano Concerto in Australia.

Vera Bradford donated her music collection to the State College of Victoria in 1978, which later became Monash University Library’s Peninsula branch. The collection was named the Vera Bradford Music Collection and contains books on the history of music, scores and sheet music, librettos, and orchestral sets. The collection has continued to grow, with donations from local Peninsula music groups, Defence Force Bands and other materials purchased by the State College of Victoria.

In 2018 Monash University Library commenced reordering and digitising the Vera Bradford Collection, comprising scores donated by the pianist in 1978 as well as donations from individuals and musical groups in the Frankston area to make these items available to the wider research community and general public.

This short talk outlined the digitisation plan and processes involved, touching upon the constraints, the solutions adopted, and the opportunities to make these valuable and unique items more accessible to students and researchers, and thereby contribute to making Vera Bradford better known to the worldwide community.

The Vera Bradford Collection online: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.1/1404337

This thesis was scanned from the print manuscript for digital preservation and is copyright the author. Researchers can access this thesis by asking their local university, institution or public library to make a request on their behalf. Monash staff and postgraduate students can use the link in the References field.

The Icelandic sagas describe Icelanders travelling throughout the medieval world. But their stories were also written down during a time of unrest, when Icelandic society was under great pressure from Norwegian political influence. The images of these far-travellers – like the men who went east to serve foreign kings, and the men and women who sailed the dangerous seas to the west, to discover and colonise new lands – can reveal aspects of author intent and values. This thesis explains how stories of far-travellers and journeys provide a literary response by their authors, articulating their sense of an emerging Icelandic identity.

This thesis explores three aspects of child growth in Sri Lanka. The first essay explores differences in child growth comparing the rural and estate sectors. The second essay evaluates the effectiveness of a nutrition intervention within the tea estate sector, and the final essay explores child growth in the backdrop of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Using various econometric techniques including innovative approaches to endogeneity, the thesis contributes both conceptually and methodologically to child malnutrition research. The thesis presents key policy prescriptions in dealing with child nutrition in the tea estate sector, and in responding to natural disasters.

Artificial intelligence in public administration is both inevitable and potentially quite beneficial. Its assistive form offers access, efficiency and convenience; while the gains potentially are even larger in its augmentive ‘machine learning’ form. Offsetting risks include disadvantaging technology poor clients, and poor design which fails adequately to reflect social welfare principles or provide adequate accountability and redress for errors; a risk heightened for machine learning. This paper reviews some of the different forms and settings for AI in social security and argues that the Australian experience to date has been very mixed due to poor or rushed AI designs, poor understanding of client characteristics, and inadequate understanding of dynamics within contracted-out government services settings.

Odisha's leading web portal OdishaDiary's Senior Editor Mr. Kamala Kanta Dash has been featured on the prestigious Monash Memo of the Monash University, Melbourne.

Kamala Kanta has been working with OdishaDiary (OD) since its inception in 2005 and has been one of the core team members in shaping the journey of OD in last seven years. Last year he along with the innovative OD team played an important role in establishing Odisha Living Legend Award, a novel way of recognising great individual and community contributions to Odisha in different walks of life. This year in 2012 Mr. Dash along with our editor Mr. Rashmi r. Parida conceptualised and added a brand new idea "Odisha Youth Inspiration Awards" to the already famous Living Legend Awards. The Youth Inspiration Awards are targeted at the young achievers of the state of Odisha which aims at making them the future legends by providing a single platform to the Legends and the Youth Inspirations.

This study is the first that investigates Indigenous Chakma’s lived experiences of diaspora in Melbourne. Within it, the role of educational affordances and achievements in maintaining and preserving Chakma culture and tradition in a multicultural yet assimilationist society are problematised. Findings suggest that the shifting positions of these Bangladeshi Chakmas are dictated not just by historical and dominant discourses of oppression, but also by their own intellectual and philosophical metamorphosis over time. The participants were vocal about their growth as individual and cultural beings and attributed such growth to factors beyond politics and economics and across time and space.

Attention has been caught by the mythic performance events that I have helped facilitate and perform over the past 30 years. This is a brief history and rationale for the making of such events.<br><br> PAN: Philosophy Activism Nature, No. 13, 2017: 12-18<br>

This thesis explores the transformation of Greco-Arabic medical teachings of Salerno 1050-1200 in a broader political context. It argues that the skills of key individuals and their pedagogic innovations not only created learned medicine but also contributed to new habits of mind in northern Europe in the twelfth century. The eleventh and twelfth centuries are at the very dawn of a Western understanding of logical truth from personal observation in medicine as distinct from received wisdom. The incorporation of natural philosophy and Aristotelian analytics from Alexandrian medicine into Salernitan medicine was an important step by which the West learned to interpret the experienced world. The world, as perceived by human senses and interpreted by human reason had, itself, to be validated as a source of reliable information in contrast to Augustine's Neoplatonist view. Augustine taught that the real world existed only as more or less imperfect copy of the ideal Form in the mind o...

Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, is also known as Kado 華道, the way of the flower. This name comes from two characters, one meaning flower and one meaning road or way, following a naming system common to many Japanese disciplines. Sado 茶 道 is the Way of Tea, Kendo 剣 道 is the Way of the Sword and Koudo 香 道 is the Way of Perfume. Like many of the traditional Japanese arts, Kado is a system of aesthetics, philosophy and practice with a focus on personal development as well as artistic achievement. The goal of Ikebana is not just the creation of beautiful arrangements; the journey is as important as the result. This idea of spiritual enlightenment through concentration and practice is central to the Zen Buddhist philosophy. For many of its practitioners, Ikebana is a lifelong lesson, a way to achieve a little inner stillness in which to work towards a richer spiritual understanding of the world, just like the Zen monks do through their meditation techniques – luckily with I...

Meeting the needs of crime victims has emerged as a significant 21st century concern. In the Australian context, various commissions of inquiry have recently considered how the interests of victims may be maintained in a system based on adversarial exchange between the accused and the state. Consensus has emerged around the further development of existing charters of victims’ rights as the framework through which victims’ interests may be secured. Importantly, reform of existing charter rights and the office that administers such charters, the Office of Commissioner of Victims’ Rights, provides a means of addressing the recommendations of the various inquiries in a way that supports the participatory needs of victims, while maintaining the independence and integrity of criminal justice processes that provide due process to the accused. This article considers the ways in which the Office of Commissioner of Victims’ Rights may be further developed to provide for the needs of victims a...

This PhD research project presents the curatorial model of the 'exhibition as study'. This methodology is one that leverages its pedagogical setting and tools, to directly address and engage small, localised audience groups. Through practice, the research has presented what I term a 'study' of the Melbourne artist group Damp (established 1995).The PhD presented the curatorial project 'Art holds a high place in my life | Damp: study of an artist at 21' which took place on the Monash University Caulfield campus throughout the 2016 academic year. Rather than a monographic exhibition, the 'study' models an alternative version of the retrospective survey.