Speaking up : changing social relations in south-west Victorian grassroots activism

This research of three grassroots activist communication campaigns makes a significant contribution to knowledge in socio-political and communicative fields. It demonstrates how to conduct effective, ethical and sustained communication campaigns that lead to wider social benefits and provides new perspectives about public relations and its role in contemporary society.

Re-engagement in education through community partnerships in south west Victoria

This case study provided policy direction for post-compulsory education. It highlighted the need for a mandated responsibility for the provision of on-going transition advice and re-engagement programs for young people who have left school. It confirmed the complexity of the work of networks formed in order to improve educational pathways.

Annual phytoplankton and nutrient fluctuations in the Hopkins Estuary, South-West Victoria, Australia

The Hopkins River drains grazing farmland for most of its length. Nutrients and phytoplankton populations in the Hopkins Estuary are strongly affected by the hydrodynamic cycle. The findings of this research show that nutrient and chlorophyll a levels in the Hopkins Estuary are high enough to indicate that future algal problems may occur and that management of nutrients entering its catchment and improvement of river banks are of high importance.

Development in Papua New Guinea : various meanings in the context of logging in West New Britain

Development in Papua New Guinea ... is research into village level issues of logging. In New Britain, nationals are offered royalties for cutting their rainforest. Information about ecology and biodiversity is usually late in coming, and such information to them does not appear to advance their development. This thesis offers the most specific method for dealing with small communities in Papua New Guinea, and confronts the issue of self development. It is posited that all other development must encourage self development in Papua New Guinea. Evidence brought here shows the need to make the Melanesian community central to development strategies.

To accomplish such a strategy, there is a need to consider Melanesian cultures. An explanation of world views ensues. The world views of people of the Pasismanua region, of New Britain's south coast, was compared broadly with Melanesian cultures and Melanesian development in a variety of circumstances. Consequently, the suggestions made are broadly applicable to situations where resources must be well monitored. There are many such situations in Pacific nations, which suggests that the thesis will be of usc to a wide research community.

Since research is grounded in ethnographic as well as other research, this kind of study generates many other research questions, and the research is designed to lead to other studies. Certain aspects of the design become disclosed when the research has progressed. As well, the background of an expatriate researcher is intrusive, and must be mitigated by some form of participation in the host culture. This is a central tenet of the thesis. This participation increases sensitivity to culture and yields a circumspect consideration of the colonial issue. Occupied for many years by colonial powers especially Australia, all New Guinea including West New Britain shows the effects of colonisation. It also shows evidence of the new colonialism of cash-cropping, and of the destruction of biodiversity. This becomes a central theme, as does the position of this researcher as a participant in a global economic culture encroaching on and invited by Papua New Guinea.

Islam and political violence : Muslim diaspora and radicalism in the West

How do we engage with the pressing challenges of xenophobia, radicalism and security in the age of the "war on terror"? The widely felt sense of insecurity in the West is shared by Muslims both within and outside Western societies. Growing Islamic militancy and resulting increased security measures by Western powers have contributed to a pervasive sense among Muslims of being under attack (both physically and culturally). Islam and Political Violence brings together the current debate on the uneasy and potentially mutually destructive relationship between the Muslim world and the West and argues we are on a dangerous trajectory, strengthening dichotomous notions of the divide between the West and the Muslim world.