Curriculum, as a policy and way of moving through educational experience, is entwined with an ongoing history of invasion in Australia and similar invader-colonial contexts. As a result of this, the conceptual foundations of curriculum in Australia reproduce colonial epistemologies as normative modes of knowing and consideration. One way of seeing…

Humanities discourse forms part of several Australian academic enabling programs, either embedded within the broader curriculum, or as part of a standalone unit. Within Edith Cowan University's UniPrep course, an introductory Humanities unit is offered to students as one of two electives alongside three other core units. The unit introduces…

Past decades have seen increased emphasis on graduate employability as a driver of higher education policy. In the Australian context, employability discourses in the public domain have become inflected with anti-intellectual sentiment, serving to reproduce the perception that the humanities and social sciences are of less value to graduates'…

The study of classics has been part of Australian and New Zealand higher education from the beginnings of tertiary education in these countries, followed shortly after by the study of ancient history. This article offers an analysis of current units of study in each Australian and New Zealand public university that continues to teach classics and…

This article investigates the relationship between disciplinarity and feminist knowledge-making in Australia's humanities and social sciences. To identify the conditions of possibility for successful feminist knowledge projects, we interpret career trajectories of senior feminist and gender researchers within five disciplines: economics, history,…

Co-authorship between doctoral students and their supervisors is a mostly occluded practice, generalised according to the candidates' disciplines. There is limited understanding of the practice, particularly in humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) disciplines. This study explores HASS doctoral students' and supervisors' perceptions towards…

Initial Teacher Education (ITE) reform in Australia has mandated that graduating teachers demonstrate their practice and 'impact' through the completion of a Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) prior to graduation. The requirement to analyse 'impact' in teaching, requires a nuanced understanding of what 'impact' is and how it manifests in varied…

This article addresses the lack of support for new supervisors in the pre-Higher Degree Research space, including undergraduate honours and postgraduate capstone projects. The research provides an inter-faculty perspective on the needs of pre-HDR students and supervisors, informing an online professional learning resource to address the problem.…

Vlogs, asynchronous video blogs where individuals film themselves to share personal experiences, have been widely used in educational settings. This study explores the integration of Microsoft Flip (Flip), a vlogging platform, in higher education, focusing on its use by academics during a 3-year pilot preceding institution-wide adoption. Grounded…

This article questions the use of the term 'siloed' to describe certain degrees or subjects in the Australian university curriculum. Education Minister Dan Tehan used the term as part of a justification of a re-set of funding priorities for university education from 2021 which he announced in June 2020. The Minister partly turned his argument on…

The current anthropogenic climate crisis presents unique challenges to the higher education classroom. Pedagogy in the context of climate change must be attuned to complex and varied student experiences that can contend with feelings of anxiety, disconnection, distress and hopelessness. As educators and researchers, we collate our pedagogical…

By any metric, the twentieth century university was a successful institution. However, in the twenty-first century, ongoing neoliberal educational reform has been accompanied by a growing epistemological crisis in the meaning and value of the humanities and social sciences (HaSS). Concerns have been expressed in two main forms. The governors of…

The pedagogical benefits of media-based assessments for students is well established. However, few studies have explored this mode of assessment from the perspective of the educator. This is a case study of media-based assessments in the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Eleven educators were surveyed to examine the…

This article discusses how doctoral candidates identify and navigate personal learning challenges on their journey to becoming researchers. Our study asked creative arts and humanities candidates to think beyond the research project itself and reflect on emotional hurdles they were facing or had overcome. The findings point to a great deal of…

This paper examines the PhD by publication in the humanities and social sciences in US, UK, Canadian and Australian universities. A set of PhDs by publication from each of these countries were collected for the study. The theses were analysed to see to what extent they fitted, or not, with discussions of thesis types described in previous research…