Vice-Chancellor and President,
Charles Darwin University
Welcome to the 2024 Charles Darwin University (CDU) Higher Degree by Research Conference. As students at CDU, you are part of CDU’s vision to be Australia’s most connected university by being courageous and making a difference in the Northern Territory, Australia and beyond. I encourage you all to be courageous and make a difference.
At CDU, we empower our emerging scholars to become the best and brightest next generation of thinkers and creators. Each year, over fifty research students from across our university come together to present new ideas, innovative methodologies, and groundbreaking research outcomes. This incredible showcase highlights the many ways our university is shaping the future.
CDU’s campuses span thousands of kilometres, from Casuarina to Katherine, Nhulunbuy to Alice Springs, and Sydney. Students from within and outside the NT are participating. We are presenting a fully digital conference this year to ensure that everyone has an equal experience, no matter where you are joining from.
The conference theme, ‘Purposeful Research – Making a Change in Real Life,’ reminds us that having an impact is something we can plan for from the outset. It encourages us to be ambitious and intentional when setting our goals and to connect them with our context, wherever we are coming from.
CDU believes in the transformative power of training, education, and research to change people’s lives for the better. We have a collective responsibility to ensure that our training, education, and research are of high quality, delivered by outstanding educators and researchers, and accessible and meaningful. What we do matters to our communities.
My deepest thanks go to everyone who has made the program possible, particularly the students whose insights, ideas and enthusiasm are the heart of everything we do.
You make CDU.
Professor Scott Bowman AO
Vice-Chancellor and President
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Innovation,
Charles Darwin University
At CDU, our research tackles challenges in our communities and out on country. As the university for northern Australia we are particularly committed to fields critical to the prosperity, cohesion, wellbeing and sustainability of our region.
Across our Faculties, Centres and Institutes, researchers are producing cutting-edge, globally significant research in fields ranging from Indigenous and tropical health to environmental science, AI and cybersecurity, and public policy.
The Higher Degree by Research Conference is fast becoming a cornerstone of our annual program and is a fantastic showcase of our research success. HDR students make a critical contribution to our research output by participating in fieldwork, driving research questions, supporting projects and bringing their unique insights to everything they do. Many of them will go on to shape our future governments, industries, organisations, businesses, and communities.
Each year, the conference provides invaluable exposure to their work, offering opportunities for feedback from peers and the cross-pollination of ideas. Importantly, events like these allow our students to practice the presentation skills that will be essential as they advance in their careers.
Thank you to everyone involved in making this year’s program a success.
Professor Steve Rogers
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Innovation
Dean of Graduate Studies,
Charles Darwin University
Purposeful Research – Making a Change in Real Life
Welcome to Charles Darwin University’s 2024 Higher Degree by Research conference. This year’s conference comprises a mix of research presentations and candidature milestone presentations. Both presentation types provide an opportunity our HDR students to showcase the importance of their research and the progress being made.
The conference theme – Purposeful Research – Making a Change in Real Life – encapsulates the significance of CDU HDR research and its real-world impact.
The conference help can help all researchers to reflect on their own research contributions, which often involve expanding knowledge, advancing methods, as well as imparting practical benefits via positive environmental, economic, social, organisational, policy and regulatory outcomes.
The CDU HDR conference presentations frequently serve as practice runs for students attending national and international conferences and are often the starting point in dissemination process.
Effective dissemination also includes publishing papers and articles, along with promoting research outputs via media. Media exposure is great for promoting research more widely, and often kick starts citation as well as leading onto other research opportunities.
The CDU media team can assist in this regard, especially if you can clearly relate your research to topical real-life themes – the focus of this year’s conference. To support our HDR students in this endeavour our Research Communications Officer (raphaella.saroukos@cdu.edu.au) will be using the conference to help identify HDR research and researchers to feature in CDU press releases.
Well done to everyone presenting at the conference, it is great to see our HDR students taking advantage of this opportunity to share your research with others.
Professor Steven Greenland
Dean of Graduate Studies