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Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC)

Turning great ideas into landmark outcomes

We use innovative and collaborative approaches to problem solving within the humanities and social sciences and beyond. Through multidisciplinary and international collaborations, we develop and support a diverse range of research.

RD Watt building

About SSSHARC

We use innovative and collaborative approaches to problem solving within the humanities and social sciences and beyond.

Opportunities

We provide innovative platforms and fellowships to approach and solve problems, such as huddles, ultimate peer reviews, pop-up research labs and more.

Research

SSSHARC curates a changing roster of interdisciplinary and collaborative research nodes that foreground excellence, innovation, creativity and engagement in the humanities and social sciences at their broadest stretch.

Events

Join us for a series of Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (SICSS) Festival workshops hosted by SSSHARC in June 2022.

SSSHARC News

Geometric image

What is computational social science?

Researchers gather at the University of Sydney to develop state-of-the-art projects at Australia’s first Summer Institute in Computational Science.

Mark LeVine

The powerful coalescence of art, activism and scholarship

SSSHARC International fellow, Professor Mark LeVine speaks about Heavy Metal Islam, activism and his approach to Indigenous scholarship.

Jen Gilbert

Sex education curriculum is underestimating our young people

Hunt-Simes Visiting Chair in Sexuality Studies Fellow, Professor Jen Gilbert speaks about sex education and LGBTQ+ issues in schools.

Susanna Paasonen

Online platforms bring new possibilities for sexual knowledge and expression

Hunt-Simes Chair in Sexuality Studies Fellow, Professor Susanna Paasonen speaks about navigating sex and consent online.

11 February 2022

A world map with colourful pins on it

Why we need to internationalize our research

The Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC) has a new Director, with a clear vision. Director Lee Wallace shares her thoughts on why international partnerships and knowledge sharing is critical for the advancement of research.

25 January 2022

Data Scientist using digital programming

University of Sydney to host inaugural Summer Institute in Computational Social Science

International program brings together social scientists and data scientists from Australia and New Zealand for two weeks of world-class training and collaboration.

11 February 2021

R.D. Watt Building

At SSSHARC questions are the focus

Unless you’ve attended a SSSHARC “huddle” or “ultimate peer review”, you might find the terms mysterious, amusing or even a little alarming. They have an interesting history that helps explain the purpose and achievements of the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre.

25 November 2020

Surveillance cameras

Bigger Brother is watching

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, is more famous than ever today for its predictions of political surveillance, censorship and disinformation. Despite its prescience, Peter Marks, Professor of English at the University of Sydney, argues that the novel should not be read as a despairing dystopia but as a universal “go-to resistance text”.

02 November 2020

Acropolis of Athens

"I don’t like Zorba"

A conversation with Vrasidas Karalis starts with Modern Greek, his official subject at the University of Sydney, and meanders into Classical Greece, the novels of Patrick White, the cinematography of Mad Max, the streets of Glebe, and many other pathways in the cultural labyrinth of this exuberant Greek-Australian ambassador.

19 October 2020

Love heart street art

The Remarriage Plot

When same-sex marriage was legalised in Australia in December 2017, Lee Wallace had already spent several years working on her new book Reattachment Theory: Queer Cinema of Remarriage, which argues that gay and lesbian lifestyles influenced ideas about marriage long before they had legal equivalency. The only difference, Wallace contends, is that now “all marriage is gay marriage”.

24 September 2020

Newtown street art

"If I’m not at the table I’m on the menu"

When Bindi Bennett was asked to contribute to a book about working across difference in social work, she hoped to change academic publishing. If she was going to write a chapter on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, she also wanted to join the team of editors.

04 September 2020

Demonstration in Hong Kong

Democracy in crisis

John Keane appears to be ageing better than the institutions of democracy he has studied for much of his career. At three score and 11 years, the prolific international scholar recently published his 17th solo-authored book, The New Despotism, and warns that the differences between post-1945 democracy and despotism are rapidly blurring.

The two worlds of the Wiradjuri people

On her first night in Wiradjuri country in 1981, Gaynor Macdonald sat by a fire on Erambie reserve near the town of Cowra in central New South Wales. Monk, a musician and activist, played his guitar while others quizzed the young anthropologist on why she was there and asked if she had links to ASIO.

Sea life in Singapore

A feminist approach to the Anthropocene

Feelings are not an obvious tool in the intellectual processes of academic research. Yet Dr Astrida Neimanis uses “feel-ed work” in her study of the relationship between people and water. She is writing a book with the ambiguous working title The Feeling of Water and, yes, she cares how the earth’s waters feel as a result of human activities.

Army soldiers

Taking aim at military sexual violence

Almost a decade has passed since the “Skype scandal” made front-page news in Australia, alerting the public to a new variation on age-old sexual crimes within the Australian Defence Force, leading to internal reviews, policy changes and declarations of zero tolerance. And yet the problem of military sexual violence has not abated.

British and European Union flags

Why Brexit will last forever

Brexit, the word and the movement, are less than a decade old. But if you want to understand Britain’s split from Europe, Dr Marco Duranti argues that you need to know the history of Europeanism, Euroscepticism, populism and the role of British Conservatives in reuniting Europe after World War II.

Letter blocks

Linguistics without borders

Dr Ahmar Mahboob often uses the name “Prof Nomad” on social media, and he describes himself as a “troublemaker”. He disputes conventional Western thinking about language, and would like to decolonise the way linguistics and social sciences are taught around the world.

Widening the conversation about adoption and foster care

Every child should have a safe and stable home, but for many reasons that can’t always be with their own family. Recent reforms to out-of-home care in New South Wales aim to move more children into permanent rather than short-term care, while keeping contact with their birth parents.

Thinking about affirmative feminist boys studies

A boy slams a door on a girl and her mother says, “You’re OK. He did it ’cause he likes you.” A father tells his son in a backyard cricket game, “Don’t chuck like a girl, mate.”

Books on shelf

Reading Beckett and Joyce with a French accent

Paris came to a corner of the University of Sydney when Professor Jean-Michel Rabaté visited to review an Australian colleague’s manuscript about Samuel Beckett, lecture on James Joyce, and give a masterclass on Jacques Derrida, who was his mentor and friend.

Marriage of disciplines traces the journey of a bird flu virus

Australian anthropologist Holly High travelled to Laos for field work in 2018, taking her children and her husband, a veterinarian and epidemiologist. The plan was he would help care for the children and continue his studies, while she did her research. When they unwittingly bought chickens carrying bird flu, they had an unplanned opportunity to combine their skills.

Theatre in times of homelessness

Milk Crate Theatre has worked with homeless people in Sydney for 20 years, enabling them to tell their stories while gaining confidence, social skills and community. But while the number and needs of the homeless grow and funds for the arts shrink, how does a small non-profit group measure its value and develop a business model to support its work?

Talking about disasters

Fire and flood, drought and pollution, mining and water rights were among many topics covered at a global symposium on environmental disasters, supported by the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC) in November 2019.

25 February 2020

wind farm

How should world leaders protect us?

A total fire ban was declared for NSW on the smoke-drenched evening last November when Professor Ole Wæver gave a talk “Hope vs Fear: climate change as a security issue”. When his six-month SSSHARC fellowship ended in January, he had watched the most destructive bushfires in Australia’s history turn the country into a dramatic case study for his theory.

14 February 2020

High angle photo of a robot

Can machines imitate human intelligence?

As rapid technological advances bring artificial intelligence into our daily life, the public imagination is still dominated by a Romantic fear that machines will take over the world.

05 December 2019

Susan Wyndham named SSSHARC Journalist-in-Residence

The Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC) has appointed journalist and University of Sydney alumna Susan Wyndham to a role as its inaugural Journalist-in-Residence.

18 September 2019

Good weather, great city, better research

International Fellows are often inspired by Sydney’s beauty and energy. They also appreciate a scholarly environment that supports academics and values multidisciplinary research. Here, two Fellows share their experiences.

Resurgent racism project begins

The new project will adopt a transnational, interdisciplinary approach to racism, bringing together top historians, political scientists, cultural studies scholars, sociologists and psychologists. International experts are invited to apply.