ARC Discovery Project success for design and planning researchers

Seven School of Architecture, Design and Planning researchers have been successful in the latest round of ARC Discovery Project grants, and will see their work funded across five different projects.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Duncan Ivison welcomed the announcement and congratulated researchers whose projects had received funding under the 2020 Discovery Project grant scheme.

“These results are an outstanding achievement and the funding will help further knowledge across a range of disciplines,” said Professor Ivison.

Researchers awarded grants in this round include: 

• Professor Nicole Gurran’s project Hidden housing crisis? Urban planning and informal housing supply aims to uncover how ‘informal’ housing such as share accommodation, backyard ‘granny flats’ and unauthorised dwellings fit within formal systems of urban regulation, and what the risks or benefits are for residents. The project intends to enhance local planning practice and improve housing standards and choice, particularly for low income renters.
• Associate Professor Martin Tomitsch will lead a team of researchers including Dr Luke Hespanhol and Dr Jennifer Kent to investigate the link between trust, safety, and the public acceptance of driverless cars. Recent injuries, and even a fatality, have highlighted the risks they pose to pedestrians in particular. Benefits of the project will include strategies for making driverless cars safer for pedestrians and a new approach for testing solutions to this emerging problem in a low-cost, low-risk way.
• Dr Kazjon Grace and his team will explore how interactive systems can enhance creative productivity, through the development and evaluation of a model for how humans and AI can interact while creating. The anticipated outcome of the project is a model for how to enhance creative work through interacting with AI, an opportunity that is currently largely unexplored.
• Associate Professor Cara Wrigley is part of a team aiming to create a strong integrative research foundation to explain how university researchers and students develop the expertise needed to work in interdisciplinary teams. The outcomes will provide a much better understanding of the qualities that help individuals and groups to work productively across disciplinary boundaries.
• Professor Robyn Dowling is part of a project team investigating innovations in urban governance. Through integrating insights from Australian and international cases, project outcomes include new knowledge to inform urban governance innovation for the Australian context and enhanced capacity to facilitate the future prosperity, wellbeing and democratic inclusiveness of Australian cities.

All successful grant recipients and projects are listed on the ARC website.