Opportunities
At Monash Art, Design and Architecture, we focus on the pursuit of research that addresses the social, economic and human issues facing Australia. We look favourably on applications that align with our research labs, focus areas, and the expertise of our supervisors, and encourage you to explore the list of opportunities below. Monash University offers an extensive range of scholarships that you may be eligible to apply for to support your study.
The role of the bicycle in sustainable transport. Of particular note here are studies that engage with industrial design studio practice to manipulate the intrinsic and socially constructed properties of bicycles to make them are more acceptable transport mode choice in low cycling mode share cultures like Australia.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Dr Robbie Napper and Associate Professor Selby Coxon
- Undertaken within: Mobility Design Lab
We invite proposals for self-initiated research projects that will stimulate debate about the ways AI might augment human creativity and open transdisciplinary dialogue between cultural production and data science by testing modes of expression, forms of experience and social intelligence… (in other words) how we see and feel, as much as think.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Dr Vince Dziekan and Professor Jon McCormack
We have a group of academics within MADA who are investigating roles for photography in shaping how we understand the built environment and are seeking PhD candidates interested in pursuing related topics. There is broad scope for PhD research in this area which can be defined in dialogue with supervisors.
This is a unique opportunity to apply for PhD scholarships in a leading initiative set to transform the building and construction industry.
- Scholarship available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Professor Shane Murray, Professor Naomi Stead, Dr Rachel Couper, Dr Duncan Maxwell, Dr Victor Bunster, Professor Nigel Bertram, Dr Lee-Anne Khor, Dr Laura Harper, Dr Alysia Bennett, Dr Jason Crow, Associate Professor Maryam Gusheh, Ross Brewin, Timothy Moore, Dr Angela Solarte and Dr Ali Rashidi
- Undertaken within: Future Building Initiative
The project aims to design, deliver and monitor a socio-technical intervention in a strategic location in the upper river catchment of the Citarum River. We aim to develop evidence through a rigorous program of research in ecological health, well-being and community resilience to climate change.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Professor Diego Ramírez-Lovering, Dr Michaela Prescott, Dr Briony Rogers and Dr Jane Holden
- Undertaken within: Informal Cities Lab
Design projects that investigate the safe design and use of assistive technology such as; the motorised mobility scooter (MMS) and in particular examines some contradictions and ambiguities associated with this increasingly popular form of mobility. This project will have shared supervision between the Mobility Design Lab and Monash University Accident Research Centre.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Associate Professor Selby Coxon and Prof. Jennie Oxley
- Undertaken within: Mobility Design Lab
Urban designers, architects and planners have key roles in making safe and inclusive places, with urban safety guidelines and crime prevention tactics foundational to safe environments. The XYX Lab are looking for projects that reduce the risks of spatial inequality in communities.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Associate Professor Nicole Kalms and Dr Gill Matthewson
- Undertaken within: XYX Lab – Gender + Place
The XYX Lab is seeking proposals that examine the confluence of factors that contribute to gendered experiences of the night-time economy – both in spatial design and visual communication design – and the role they play as a cultural and social practice that can contribute to challenging power relations within cities, and consequently to women’s feelings of safety within them.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Associate Professor Nicole Kalms, Dr Gill Matthewson, Associate Professor Gene Bawden and Jess Berry
- Undertaken within: XYX Lab – Gender + Place
Improving accessibility to rail station infrastructure for those with physical and cognitive impairments
How to applyDesign research that seeks to address improved accessibility to public transport from those who have physical impairment. This project will have shared supervision between the Mobility Design Lab and Monash Institute of Rail Technology.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Associate Professor Selby Coxon and TBA - Monash Institute of Rail Technology
- Undertaken within: Mobility Design Lab
Geolocative mapping has become a useful way to create and share content, and to shed light on hidden experiences in cities. While digital technologies are implicated in public surveillance, there are opportunities to use social media to shape the everyday practices of urban life. The capacity for geolocative to be deployed as a valid design research method has been underestimated. A strong PhD proposal will advance knowledge of the social inequity of women, gender-diverse and/or other marginalised groups using innovative methods.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Associate Professor Nicole Kalms and Dr Gill Matthewson
- Undertaken within: XYX Lab – Gender + Place
This research strand is open to speculative as well as applied investigations that explore the fullest range of multisensory and immersive experiences that museums and their collections can offer. We are particularly interested in supporting proposals that seek to extend the palette of media, design and communications beyond the visual to other senses (haptic, aural) and sensibilities.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Dr Vince Dziekan and Professor Jon McCormack
Design project seeks to address how pedestrians will navigate safely a road network dominated by Autonomous Vehicles. How will the man machine interface be effective between robot and pedestrians and active transport users?
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Associate Professor Selby Coxon, Prof Jennie Oxley and Dr Steve O'Hern
- Undertaken within: Mobility Design Lab
The future of human powered logistics. We invite proposals that use industrial design studio practice to carry out research on cyclelogistics. These may engage with transferring technology from one culture to another or developing new vehicles, or other approaches to this problem.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Dr Robbie Napper and Associate Professor Selby Coxon
- Undertaken within: Mobility Design Lab
The number and frequency of home delivery services has grown enormously over recent years, accelerated by the global COVID-19 pandemic and the ubiquity of digital platforms that serve a wide variety of needs from food takeaway services to goods and services. The design of vehicles and objects to facilitate these needs has largely been iterative rather than considered and so the Mobility Design Lab welcomes research that addresses these issues that underpin safe and reliable delivery services from micro mobility to delivery trucks.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Associate Professor Selby Coxon and Dr Robbie Napper
- Undertaken within: Mobility Design Lab
Working with communities, governments, local leaders and partner institutions, RISE is co-designing location-specific solutions that integrate green infrastructure, such as constructed wetlands, to strengthen the whole-of-life water and sanitation cycle. We aim to develop evidence through a rigorous program of research in ecological health, and human health and well-being.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Professor Diego Ramírez-Lovering, Dr Michaela Prescott and Professor Mohamed El-Sioufi
- Undertaken within: Informal Cities Lab
We invite proposals for self-initiated research projects that will stimulate debate about new and emerging, near-future technologies, especially their role in promoting forms of knowledge – including embodied and experiential processes – that engage and involve people in thinking differently about the future.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Dr Vince Dziekan and Professor Jon McCormack
Blend interdisciplinary approaches from urban planning, geography, and history to examine the changing functions and roles of urban industrial land. Through digital archival mapping, on-site analysis, and planner interviews, develop a deeper understanding of how industrial lands and their regulatory settings are linked to changes in urban development over time.
- Scholarship available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Professor Carl Grodach, Dr Elizabeth Taylor and Associate Professor Joe Hurley
- Undertaken within: Monash Urban Lab
This project aims to investigate the ways that visual images have defined, contested and advanced ideas of Australian citizenship and rights during the twentieth century.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Professor Melissa Miles and Fay Anderson
This project examines the role of visual culture in shaping connections between citizenship, labour and rights. It may be focused on a specific historical case study, such as the visual culture connected to postwar migration, or the ways in which contemporary photography and art practice seek to rethink the relationships between work, citizenship and belonging.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Professor Melissa Miles and Fay Anderson
We invite creative practitioners (media artists, creative technologists, content producers) wishing to extend their studio practice by engaging deeply and experimentally with immersive image technologies – such as Augmented and Virtual Reality – to propose projects that will be undertaken through practice-based research resulting in creative outcomes (artworks, film screenings, installations) that seek to define the language of these media forms and stretch their narrative and experiential parameters beyond the cinematic frame to cinematographic space.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Dr Vince Dziekan, Professor Jon McCormack and Dr Tom Chandler
The XYX Lab seeks PhD proposal across the broad theme of 'Women and Housing' with the aim to expand the understanding of spaces for women, by women and the significance of gender in designing for women. The PhD proposal will focus on the crisis of accommodation for women in Australia and the scale of domestic abuse faced by women, and well as broad issues of women's safety and security.
- Scholarship may be available
- Open call
- Supervisors: Associate Professor Nicole Kalms and Dr Gill Matthewson
- Undertaken within: XYX Lab – Gender + Place