Summer and Winter Research Programs

The 2027 Summer Research Program will run for 6 weeks between 11 January -  19 February 2027.  

Application period: 21 September - 11 October 2026.
You must submit an online application form by 11:59pm, Sunday 11 October 2026 if you wish to be considered for this program.

Project title: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Entrepreneurship in Greater Brisbane

Supervisor(s): A/Prof Jaimee Stuart

Project description: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses can create employment opportunities, strengthen economic independence, reduce disadvantage, support communities and contribute to cultural and social wellbeing. Indigenous businesses operate across a diverse range of sectors yet relatively little is known about the Indigenous business ecosystem within specific Australian cities.

This project will examine Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entrepreneurship in Greater Brisbane. It will explore the types of Indigenous businesses operating across the region, their potential contributions to employment and community benefit, and the organisations, programs and initiatives available to support business development and growth. The student will undertake a focused review of research and reports on Indigenous entrepreneurship and use directories and publicly available sources to develop a profile of the Greater Brisbane business ecosystem.

The project forms part of an Australian Laureate Fellowship examining how cities can support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, well-being, economic participation and self-determination. The student’s work will provide foundational evidence for future engagement with Indigenous businesses and for research into how urban environments can better support Indigenous entrepreneurship, employment and economic prosperity.

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Project title: Creating Inclusive Cities: How Urban Local Councils Support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Wellbeing, Recognition and Participation

Supervisor(s): A/Prof Jaimee Stuart

Project description: Local governments influence many aspects of everyday life, including community development, public spaces, cultural activities, environmental planning, recreation, local services, and community wellbeing. Across Australia, some city councils have increasingly introduced policies, strategic plans and initiatives that seek to recognise and support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities. These include Reconciliation Action Plans, Indigenous engagement strategies, community wellbeing plans, cultural heritage initiatives, and commitments to Indigenous inclusion and participation. Yet no research has systematically explored the ways in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ priorities and aspirations are represented in these planning and policy frameworks and whether communities themselves have been authentically included in their development.

This project is part of a larger Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship exploring how cities can better support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and well-being. The research will investigate whether and how city councils in major urban areas recognise and respond to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through policy and planning. The student will systematically identify, collect, organise, code, and interpret documents from across urban local councils. In doing so the student will help to establish the a comprehensive, systematic review of how city councils approach Indigenous inclusion, participation, recognition, and well-being. The project will provide important foundational evidence for future research, policy development and urban planning.

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Project title: RISE: Research to Impact, Synergise, and End STIs using multi-level strategies and community-led program science

Supervisor(s): Dr Julie-Anne Carroll

Project description: RISE is a project that is implementing multi-level interventions at individual, community, health service, and structural levels with the aim of reducing unacceptably high rates of STIs in regional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia. STIs such as Chlamydia, Syphilis, and Gonorrhoea have increased exponentially in the past decade, and as such, these interventions will encourage safer sex practices, increase testing and re-testing, as well as treatment adherence. A range of health promotion efforts, clinician training, condom access points and data collection and feedback tools are being implemented to assess changes in STI rates over time in Central QLD, Cairns, and Northern Territory. The data will be compared with control sites to ascertain whether a multi-level intervention approach is effective in redressing this health inequality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

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Project title: Truth-Telling, Visibility and Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australian Cities

Supervisor(s): A/Prof Jaimee Stuart

Project description: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures are increasingly visible in Australian cities through public initiatives such as art, flags, language, memorials, walking trails, exhibitions and Acknowledgements of Country. While these forms of representation can support recognition and cultural pride, visibility is not necessarily the same as truth-telling. Specifically, truth-telling involves engaging with a fuller account of Australia’s history, including colonisation, dispossession and exclusion, and the strength, survival and resistance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This project will investigate what distinguishes initiatives that enable visibility and recognition from substantive truth-telling in urban spaces. The student will undertake a focused review of the literature and help develop a conceptual framework that can allow for the systematic categorisation of actions and initiatives in terms of visibility, recognition, or truth-telling. The framework will then be applied by the student to a small number of urban sites or initiatives, with Brisbane as the primary location for case studies (selected examples from other Australian cities may also be included for comparison).

This project forms part of an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship examining how cities can better support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and well-being. The student’s work will help establish a conceptual foundation for future research on truth-telling, cultural pride, belonging and inclusion in Australian cities.

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Project title: Integrating the clinical, diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic pathways for nominated Vaccine Preventable Diseases (VPDs) to ensure all outputs from the ATLAS Surveillance system are clinically meaningful and relevant to the sector.

Supervisor(s): Dr Carol El-Hayek and Shellee Williams

Project description: This project is part of the ATLAS Indigenous Primary Care Surveillance and Research Network (ATLAS) program, managed within the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health based in Toowong.

The student would be working alongside epidemiologists and data analysts on a longstanding infectious disease surveillance system set up to monitor sexually transmissible infections and blood borne viruses using clinical data from a national network of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services. The surveillance platform is being expanded to include vaccine preventable diseases (VPD) such as pertussis, hepatitis A, shigella, COVID-19, tuberculosis, and others.

A key component of setting up disease surveillance for new infections is developing a strong understanding of the clinical and diagnostic context for each disease being monitored. This placement would involve collating and integrating information on clinical guidelines, vaccination schedules, laboratory case definitions, and treatment pathways for selected VPDs. This work will provide the foundation for the surveillance system’s data processing, analysis and reporting to ensure all outputs from the system are clinically meaningful and relevant to the sector.

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