Alfred Deakin Professor Fethi Mansouri

What is the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) and what inspired you to become its Director?

ADI creates cutting-edge knowledge about citizenship, diversity, inclusion and globalisation that informs scholarship, debate and policy. Our mission is to understand the complex social issues associated with globalising processes through innovative, mixed-method, multidisciplinary research.

I was inspired to become ADI’s founding Director as it provides significant opportunities to embrace change, seek to critically understand the events and challenges of the world and continue to innovate.

What do you enjoy about being the Director and how do you balance that task with your own research?

Being the founding Director of ADI is a tremendous honour but also a heavy responsibility as we support and train hundreds of researchers across various levels of seniority. What I enjoy most about the role is the capacity to implement our vision for social impact through important investment and collaboration, both within and outside of ADI and Deakin.

There’s also the challenge of keeping my own research program ticking along with a number of externally funded projects as well as my UNESCO Chair commitments, my large cohort of doctoral students and other professional and public commitments. For me, what sustains this diverse and demanding workload is passion for and commitment to the underlying issues around justice, inclusion and human rights. At a more practical level, the best way to manage this diverse and demanding agenda has been to organise my working week into different day segments, each dedicated to a particular task so that there is enough time to engage meaningfully with my research and writing, doctoral supervision and the ADI and UNESCO management issues.

What distinguishes ADI from other research institutes in the field?

ADI is one of the largest humanities and social science institutes in Australia and globally. It’s unique in its capacity to attract scholars who are thought leaders and experts in their respective fields and who are ready and willing to embrace our multi-disciplinary, problem-oriented, partnership-led research program. This generates not only academic excellence but also real social impact.

How does ADI contribute to Deakin's strategic priorities? What are your priorities for the Institute?

ADI is making significant advancements within society and culture research. We currently have 150 active research projects across several research areas, from decolonisation to peacebuilding in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, to climate change activism.

Our focus is on sharing our research through practical channels, engaging in government and non-government partnerships and supporting high-quality research and doctoral students.

We’re committed to leading high-impact knowledge creation that has a meaningful and measurable effect on lived human experiences.

How can potential external collaborators work with ADI?

The Institute has collaborations and partnerships with universities, civil society organisations, the not-for-profit sector, government agencies and industry around the world. With expertise in the Asia-Pacific, Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, we design and conduct a variety of research projects with many partners in these regions. Our research within the Institute is organised around our four research streams:  Governance, Development and Peace (GDP); People, Place and Heritage (PPH); Diversity, Mobility and Multiculturalism (DMM); and Culture, Environment and Science (CES).

To get involved with ADI, we encourage potential external collaborators to simply reach out to our researchers, who will be delighted to arrange time for conversations about how it might be possible to work together on issues of critical importance to both parties. In ADI, we view partnerships as genuine collaborative endeavours where different sets of skills and resources are mobilised to tackle pressing problems affecting our communities locally, nationally and, in some cases, internationally.

What are some of the major projects ADI is working on?

The impact and significance of ADI’s research is reflected in the breadth of our research expertise and how it speaks at once to academic innovation and societal concerns. Across our research projects, we make a difference by expanding the capacity, depth and quality of knowledge being used to solve the contemporary issues of society. Some illustrative research projects include:

• Professor Ihsan Yilmaz: Civilisationist Mobilisation, Digital Technologies and Social Cohesion. This an Australian Research Council  Discovery  project looking to advance the knowledge around authoritarian states’ transnational influence on social cohesion and inter-group conflict.
• Associate Professor Holly High: Cultural values, birth and parenting: Reproductive health and Lao socialism.This an Australian Research Council  Future Fellowship  project that investigates the rollout of an ambitious reproductive health initiative in Laos. It seeks  to document birth and parenting practices already present in Laos (including a museum exhibition appreciating birth and parenting practices as cultural heritage) and to also understand the cultural values at play in the push to change birth and parenting practices.
• Professor Fethi Mansouri and Associate Professor Matteo Vergani:  Mapping Social Services Provision for Diverse Communities.This is an Australian Research Council Linkage project that  seeks to determine how to improve the social inclusion of migrant communities through the effective provision of social services.
• Associate Professor Anthony Ware and Professor Greg Barton:  Appropriate International Development Responses to Address Violent and Hateful Extremism. This is an Australian Research Council Linkage project focuses on developing knowledge, tools and elements of interventions, to enable the planning and implementation of appropriate programmes at individual, household and community levels. It seeks to develop innovative strategies  to engage effectively with  government agencies, security forces or religious leaders that either implicitly support violent and hateful extremism (VHE), or directly propagate narratives or violence themselves.

What disciplines are you looking for in your research degree candidates and how can prospective students engage with ADI?

The Institute’s vibrant research environment supports excellence, innovation and collaboration among theorists and problem-oriented researchers who examine contentious and critical social issues.

We’re eager to support our research degree candidates through mentoring and training schemes and to help develop their career pathways. We’re open to new ways of thinking about and studying social phenomena, across diverse disciplines and areas of study.

We encourage all prospective candidates to attend our Public Policy Forums to see our research in action and keep up to date on ADI announcements for PhD scholarship opportunities.

How do research degree candidates contribute to ADI’s work? Where do you see your current research degree candidates working in the future? How do you see them contributing to the field?

PhD candidates are an integral part of the work and life of the Institute. Not only do we provide them with world-class training and support, but we try as much as possible to integrate them into real projects in order for them to gain practical experience around project design, implementation and translation.

We see our PhD candidates emerging as experts in their fields and well placed to progress their careers, in different contexts, towards making significant contributions to the field in the future.

What advice can you provide to a prospective research degree candidate looking to work in the same field?

Always make sure that you understand what’s motivating your choice for a particular field. For me, for example, it was a deep passion for human rights and social justice and a commitment to improve the conditions for those individuals and groups who happen to be the victims of oppression and injustice.

What's something you wish you knew when you were starting out your career?

I wish I knew more about institutional support available for early career researchers. This could have helped even more when I was combining heavy teaching duties with building a research career.

What do you think will be some of the most exciting or ground-breaking uses of ADI’s research in 10-20 years’ time?

In 20 years’ time, I hope ADI’s research will have contributed significantly to the social justice agenda in Australia and internationally. This will be achieved through impactful input into decision-making and practice in key areas, especially those affecting vulnerable groups.