Projects

RESEARCH PROJECTS

The solutions to the biggest challenges of our time won’t come from just one subject or discipline. This is why RED asks you to collaborate in teams with people from across Monash to build your capacity to lead and activate change.

You’ll be invited to explore a research project in an interdisciplinary team composed of other students from across the University, that aligns with at least one of the three overarching themes below.

In collaboration with your peers, guiding staff and Monash researchers - you’ll then address the challenge of how we might translate research into practice to create meaningful change.

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The challenges of the age

Climate changes now being generated and experienced threaten the fabric of our planet, the quality of air, water and biodiversity that sustains us.

Explore how to:

  • Understand new or emerging knowledge on how climate change operates, solutions to its impacts, and how this translates into action.
  • Access knowledge previously ignored or marginalised, as can be found in Indigenous knowledge and practices, such as those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia.
  • Develop new technologies, skills and capabilities, and changes to behaviours and social and cultural patterns.
  • Modify behavioural and social patterns.

Net Zero Precincts - an interdisciplinary approach to decarbonising cities

From precinct level to major urban centres, our vision is to help create cities that use net zero energy, are resilient to climate change, and support diverse communities. Focused at the Monash Clayton campus, Monash’s Net Zero Precincts ARC Linkage Project provides an exemplary demonstration project using a Living Lab approach for transitioning our cities - one that can be replicated in other places and contexts around the world.

Image Attribution: Net Zero Precincts

Electric buses, multi-modal transport and net zero mobility

Australia’s transition from diesel to electric bus fleets will present multiple challenges. In a major new research project, an interfaculty team working with a consortium led by bus operator CDC are trialling and assessing electric bus operations. As a result of Monash research and collaboration with industry, electric buses are now running between Huntingdale train station and Monash Clayton campus. This pilot route will provide the evidence base for future mobility to manage a transition toward net-zero mobility.

Image Attribution: CDC Victoria

Revitalising Informal Settlements and their Environments (RISE)

More than one billion people live in urban informal settlements globally, where polluted water and inadequate sanitation are the leading causes of preventable diseases. Poor health is linked to environmental exposure to pathogens, pollutants and disease vectors in water, food, air and soil. Working at the intersection of health, environment, water and sanitation; this project explores how we might work with local communities and address the challenges to transform human, environmental and ecological health across the developing world.

Image Attribution: Revitalising Informal Settlements and their Environments

Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF)

Due to the current trajectory of human-induced climate change, Antarctica’s ice sheets are melting, its climate is changing and the Southern Ocean is warming, becoming more acidic and losing oxygen. This change will have profound consequences for Australia and our neighbours. The futures of both Antarctica and Australia are inseparable, and both are at risk. Explore how we can raise awareness about Antarctica's environmental future in the public, and what SAEF is doing about it here.

Image Attribution: Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future

Disruption is occurring to established institutional orders across and within nations.

Explore how to:

  • Unpack the complexity of international and national relations, from the role of alliances to the regulation of borders.
  • Develop paths to peace and reconciliation of past wrongs and conflicts.
  • Recognise the gendered nature of violence and its particular impacts related to race, ethnicity or religion, from new forms of digital surveillance and information to the insecurity within nations.

Towards global responsibility for Afghanistan

Efforts by the Taliban to reinstitute a gender apartheid regime, which excludes women and girls from social, economic and political spheres present urgent challenges as to how we might promote the fundamental rights of women and girls, and ensure inclusive peace in Afghanistan. Explore how we might advocate for global responsibility for Afghanistan, and promote human rights and education for all with Monash researchers in the new ARC Centre for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Image Attribution: ARC Centre for the Elimination of Violence against Women

Gender-safe spaces with Monash XYX Lab

XYX Lab is a team of researchers who operate at the intersection of gender, identity, urban space and advocacy. XYX Lab brings together planners, policy makers, local government and stakeholders to make tangible the experiences of underrepresented communities in urban space and planning. Explore how we might make the Clayton precinct safer for women, girls and gender-diverse people - and what XYX Lab is doing about it.

Image Attribution: HyperSext City, Fremantle Design Week (2022) and Tin Sheds Gallery Sydney (2021), by Monash XYX Lab. Photograph: Brett Brown

Thriving communities hold the promise of the ‘good life’ we seek. This is the challenge of how we live well, and how we live well together.

Explore how to:

  • Address medical and social issues, at a scale that has not previously been experienced.
  • Prevent or manage both communicable and non-communicable diseases.
  • Build cohesive and tolerant societies, and address global disruptions and inequalities.
  • Better understand First Nations sovereignty, address the history and ongoing impact of colonisation, displacement and deprivation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

Advanced mRNA medicines, manufacturing and workforce training

Monash is home to Australia's largest RNA and mRNA research network, which includes the country's first dedicated mRNA workforce training centre. Explore how we might address the emerging challenge of expanding this mRNA ecosystem in the Asia-Pacific and beyond, to support developing countries in adopting mRNA technologies to ensure life-saving vaccines are available to all.

Image Attribution: Monash mRNA. Team member: Dr Harry Al-Wassiti

At the Heart of Health - health literacy with the Victorian Heart Hospital

Coronary heart disease (CHD) remains a leading cause of death in Australia, and lower socioeconomic groups carry the greatest burden of this disease. Explore how we might address health inequalities and improve health literacy with the Victorian Heart Institute and A/Prof Alison Beauchamp to develop practical tools that support the application of health literacy. Discover heart health and foster genuine understanding to empower patients to recover fully, and live longer and more fulfilling lives.

The Victorian Heart Hospital: a partnership between Monash University, Monash Health and the Victorian Government

Impact of robots on public spaces

Robotic technologies are increasingly present in urban public spaces, with applications for delivery, cleaning, security and wayfinding already in city spaces around the world. The Monash Data Futures Institute and Emerging Technologies Research Lab address this by developing new methodologies and policy insights for this rapidly proliferating technology.

Image Attribution: Shanti Sumartojo, Emerging Technologies Research Lab

Wunungu Awara - animating Indigenous Knowledges

In 1997 there were approximately 270 speakers of the Yanyuwa language, a language spoken in the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria. Today, there are three. The loss of a language is a lot more than just the loss of words - it's also the loss of identity, spirituality, cultural knowledge and values. Using the latest 3D animation technology, Indigenous stories and languages come to life – and protect Indigenous languages and knowledge into the future.

Image Attribution: Wunungu Awara

MedTech with Monash Institute of Medical Engineering (MIME)

The most significant advances in healthcare technology are increasingly the result of collaboration between Medical Researchers, Engineers, Designers, and IT specialists - which is why the Monash Institute of Medical Engineering (MIME) was formed. Explore how we might translate the next generation of connected MedTech from the lab bench to the hospital floor and what MIME is doing about it.

Image Attribution: Monash Institute of Medical Engineering (MIME)

...and more

Explore these and other research projects presented by the challenges of the age. Learn about other research projects by attending a RED information session.