Tackling the problem of data curation, predicting the outcomes of financial crises, and creating a legal framework to protect mangrove ecosystems are some of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law research projects that have netted a total of $2.15 million in Australian Research Council (ARC) grant funding.
BEL researchers were recently awarded seven ARC Discovery Project grants totalling $1.64 million, and one ARC Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grant amounting to $515,000.
All three BEL schools – UQ Business School, the School of Economics and the TC Beirne School of Law – had successful ARC grant applications.
BEL Faculty Associate Dean (Research) Professor Victor Callan said the Australian Government funding would empower BEL researchers to strive for greater global impact with their work.
“Winning these highly competitive grants to fund these research projects illustrates the high quality of the researchers across our three schools,” he said.
“By collaborating with co-investigators in their own schools, across faculties and partner institutions, our researchers will be able to bring together different perspectives and apply their findings to help solve complex global challenges.
“Congratulations to our ARC grant recipients on their success.”
UQ Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Peter Høj said UQ claimed the second highest number of Discovery Project grants awarded to universities across Australia.
“When coupled with the August announcement of Laureate and Future Fellowships, UQ has been awarded more funding across the ARC Discovery Program than any other Australian university, securing more than $60.5 million,” Professor Høj said.
“It’s an emphatic result that underscores that you can find the nation’s best researchers at UQ.”
BEL researchers were awarded grants for the following projects:
$440,000 to Professor Marta Indulska (UQ Business School) and co-investigators from UQ’s Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology for a Discovery Project to tackle the problem of time-consuming data curation. Using crowdsourced data curation processes, this research is expected to help organisations fast track their data analysis projects and speed up their decision-making.
$240,000 to Associate Professor Tyler Okimoto (UQ Business School) and co-investigators from Flinders University for a Discovery Project to study the dynamics between forgiveness and self-forgiveness following hurt and wrongdoing in interpersonal relationships. The research is expected to benefit family wellbeing and employee productivity by improving reconciliation processes and alleviating pain, stress and financial costs.
$160,000 to Professor Claudio Mezzetti (School of Economics) for a Discovery Project that aims to develop best practice dispute resolution techniques and, more generally, to design procedures and institutions (for example, markets) under which the socially efficient exchange of information will take place among parties with competing interests.
$180,000 to Professor Andrew McLennan, Dr Shino Takayama, Dr Yuichiro Waki, Dr Christoph Mueller and Dr Satoshi Tanaka (School of Economics) for a Discovery Project to understand and predict the outcomes of financial crises and how public policies can be used to lift productivity and growth in such situations. The long-term goal is to improve the overall health of the financial system.
$213,000 to Associate Professor Marco Faravelli, Dr Haishan Yuan (School of Economics) and a co-investigator from UNSW for a Discovery Project to understand how citizens’ voting behaviours are shaped by the quantity and quality of the information they acquire about different policy proposals. This research could help governments devise policies to reduce voter polarisation and improve the quality of the political debate and democracy.
$117,582 to Dr Justine Bell-James (TC Beirne School of Law) for a Discovery Project to design a legal framework that recognises, manages and protects Australia’s valuable mangrove ecosystem services. This framework will also be adaptable to provide significant benefits to other fragile ecosystems in Australia.
$515,000 to Dr Justine Bell-James (TC Beirne School of Law) and multiple co-investigators across Australia for a LIEF to create an Australian environmental and planning law library that provides comprehensive and free access to legal research resources. This library will help researchers in the field conduct the highest quality research relating to the protection of natural resources, pollution prevention, and urban development and infrastructure planning. It will support the development of improved public policy and better outcomes for the natural and built environments.
Read more about the 67 UQ projects to receive ARC Discovery Project grants.
Find out more about UQ's LIEF grants.
Contact: BEL Communications, media@bel.uq.edu.au, (07) 3346 9349.
