Visualising Global Encounters
Practice-based PhD scholarship
Location | Monash University Clayton Campus |
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Duration |
Three years and three months Fixed-term, full-time candidature |
Remuneration | The successful applicant will receive a Faculty of IT Research Living Allowance currently valued at $29,500 per annum 2021 full-time rate (tax-free stipend), indexed plus allowances as per RTP stipend scholarship conditions. |
About the project
This PhD project focuses on mapping and imagining first encounters between Australian First Nations sea and coastal peoples through digital reconstructions of past landscapes and environments.
The evidence for these reconstructions will be drawn from diverse sources as well as the technologies used to explore them, such as 3D modelling and animation, digital cartography and virtual and augmented reality.
This scholarship is funded by the Faculty of IT in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts.
While the successful applicant will join the research team and contribute to the wider project, they will also undertake their own PhD project. The benefits are:
- integration into a successful research agenda that has been funded by the Australian Research Council through Professor Lynette Russell’s Laureate Fellowship
- access to funding to support fieldwork, transcription, travel and conference attendance
- expert supervision from research leaders, and from entering a PhD with a pre-existing structure
- the research outcomes, which may include co-authored publications (where the candidate’s contributions will be recognised through co-authorship), funded symposia, school-engagement exercises and future grant applications.
Support for Indigenous PhD students
When you undertake an IT PhD with Monash, you’ll automatically be put forward for any applicable scholarships and have access to other additional support resources:
- a tax-free stipend of $29,500 per annum for 3.5 years
- the opportunity to apply for the Monash Indigenous Research Award funded by MGRO. This is a $5,000 tax-free annual top-up
- $4,000 of research support over the duration of your candidature
- a laptop or desktop provided by the Faculty.
Undertake a new type of PhD
A first for IT doctoral research in Australia, our PhD by Practice Based Research and Exegesis encourages creative projects that drive discoveries through making, building and creating.
Your research will typically be interdisciplinary, linking IT and creative technologies with fields such as indigenous studies, history and cultural heritage.
You will also present substantial research through an immersive, interactive demonstration that engages one or more of the senses, with an examination of a 30,000-word exegesis.
Why study at Monash?
Monash University is the largest university in Australia.
We rank in the world’s top 100 for Computing and Information Sciences (QS World University Rankings by Subject, 2021) and are the country’s most innovative university (Reuters Top 75: Asia’s Most Innovative Universities, 2017-2019).
For this PhD, you will be based at our Clayton campus in the Department of Human-Centred Computing – one of the largest multidisciplinary collectives of researchers, practitioners and scholars who are exploring how digital technologies can create a more equitable future.
What’s more, Indigenous Studies at Monash blends expertise across the humanities including archaeology, anthropology and history. We have a strong, supportive research culture led by internationally-recognised scholars who attract competitive funding from across the globe.
Candidate requirements
Applicants will ideally have an excellent academic track record and satisfy the criteria required for PhD admission at Monash University.
Historical archive, linguistic and anthropology skills and competence in both quantitative and qualitative research methods are desirable, but not essential.
Scholarship holders must be enrolled full-time and on campus. Applicants who already hold a PhD will not be considered.
The successful applicant will be expected to enrol by February 2022, however there may be flexibility around the commencement date.
Supervisory team

Professor Lynette Russell AM
Monash Indigenous Studies Centre
Faculty of Arts
Professor Russell is one of Australia's leading historians and an internationally-recognised expert on Indigenous histories.
Her research focuses on developing an anthropological approach to the story of the past, challenging not only what we know – but how we know it. With work that is frequently collaborative and interdisciplinary, Professor Russell is the deputy director of the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity and Heritage.
Professor Russell has published over twelve books on topics as diverse as museums and museum displays, Aboriginal faunal knowledge, colonial history and the early Australian whaling industry. She has also held fellowships at both Cambridge and Oxford.

Dr Thomas Chandler
Department of Human-Centered Computing
Faculty of Information Technology
Dr Chandler’s research explores the interdisciplinary applications of virtual world building, with project collaborations ranging from archaeology, anthropology and zoology through to industrial design and landscape ecology.
His primary research endeavour, the Visualising Angkor Project, explores the evidence-based virtual reconstruction of Cambodia's medieval capital in the year 1300.
In 2018 Dr Chandler was awarded the American Historical Association’s Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History for the university teaching resource. In 2021, Virtual Angkor received the Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Prize by the Medieval Academy of America.