University of MelbourneMelbourne Sustainable Society Institute

Faculty: Law
                                          Director: Professor Timothy Lindsey

The Asian Law Centre directs its efforts towards:

• improving knowledge and understanding of the laws of the Asia-Pacific region
• supporting the rule of law in Asia
• promoting teaching and research on Asian legal systems in Australia, Asia and elsewhere
• fostering the development of both Asian studies and languages in different disciplinary contexts, and encouraging links with legal studies
• promoting the importance of comparative law in Asian legal studies and research
• encouraging exchanges of staff and students between the Melbourne Law School and Asian universities and institutions.

Centre Professor Tim Lindsey is engaged with research on Law Reform and Transition in Developing States. Sarah Biddulph is investigating Water, Energy and Climate Change Futures in Australia and China. Andrew Godwin is undertaking research on reform to rural land rights in China - relevant to sustainability because it is looking at what legal framework might be put in place in order to increase the efficiency and productivity of rural land rights in China.

Faculty: Arts
                                         Director: Dr Fay Anderson

The Australian Centre has international recognition for its interdisciplinary research on Australian society and its public culture. This includes work on population, attitudes to the country and the history of water.

The Centres current projects include;

• Sara Wills, ‘Hostels, Hosts and Hospitality: A Social and Cultural History of Migrant Temporary Accommodation in Australia Since the Second World War’
• Michael Cathcart, ‘Water Dreamers: How Water and Silence made Australia’ – a study of the ideologies which had driven exploration, irrigation and environmentalism
  

Faculty: Science
                                         Director: Professor Mark Burgmann

ACERA pursues research in conjunction with a range of university, government and industry partners. It aims to advance the theory and practice of risk analysis under a number of themes, namely:

• biosecurity framework development
• eliciting judgements
• risk analysis methods
• surveillance and monitoring
• communication and decision making

University of Melbourne researchers have conducted projects on risk communication, stakeholder mapping and perceptions of risk. 

Faculty: Science
                                         Director: Dr Mark McDonnell

ARCUE is an initiative of the School of Botany, and a division of the Melbourne Botanical Garden. It aims to contribute to understanding of urban ecology through:

• development of models and quantitative assessment tools for managing biodiversity in urban and suburban environments
• investigating remnant grassland, heathland and Red Gum remnants, and altered landscape patterns and processes
• investigating animal distribution and food resource availability in Melbourne
• providing insights into aspects of conservation such as the role of roadsides as habitat, revegetation, spread of non-indigenous plants.

Faculty: Commerce
Director: Associate Professor Michelle Brown

The Centre for Human Resource Management comprises Department of Management and Marketing researchers with interests in Human Resource Management. The Centre's members bring a broad range of disciplinary perspectives (from industrial relations, psychology, economics and sociology) and methodological expertise to bear upon contemporary human resource challenges.

Established in 1999, and located within the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne, the Centre for Human Resource Management operates as a bridge between the academic and business communities. Its aim is to facilitate research on employment issues and disseminate research findings to impact practice and policy. Centre members regularly engage in collaborative work with industry partners to address problems of mutual interest.

The Centre for Human Resource Management organises programs and events designed to promote research on human resource management topics and develop the skills of human resource management researchers. The Centre regularly hosts international visitors and in 2005-2007 is sponsoring a series of research methods workshops for academic researchers.

In addition to research activities, the Centre for Human Resource Management fosters the career development of HR professionals by providing continuing education opportunities through

Faculty: Law
                                         Director: Lee Godden

The Centre for Resources, Energy and Environmental Law (CREEL) aims to promote research, (including RHD scholarship); teaching; and publication into the legal, regulatory and policy frameworks that engage with:

• the production and distribution of energy, including consideration of climate change regulation
• the sustainable development of natural resources
• the protection of the environment and the promotion of ecologically sustainable development
• the planning for, and provision of infrastructure in urban areas, and that associated with energy and resource development
• the recognition and protection of indigenous rights and interests in land and resources.

CREEL aims to engage in these legal matters with respect to contemporary developments and issues in Australia, Asia-Pacific, internationally, and in selected regions. It seeks to strengthen and establish links with other centres in Australia and overseas engaged in equivalent activities. It encourages involvement from industry, professions, government and universities in Australia and overseas in the Centre's activities.

CREEL directors' research strengths are in environmental law, international law, natural resource law, Indigenous land rights, the integration of law and science, and in planning and property law. Australian Research Council funding has enabled the following projects: ‘Managing Competing Claims to Land and Resources - Is Property Law the Answer?' (L Godden. and M. Tehan) and ‘The Implementation of Agreements and Treaties with Indigenous and Local Peoples in Postcolonial States' (with M. Langton, M. Tehan, L. Palmer)

Faculty: Engineering
                                          Director: Prof. Rodney Tucker

The aim of CUBIN's Green Internet Project is to develop our understanding of power demands of the Internet and to use this understanding to make the Internet sustainable by devising methods for improving the power efficiency of the Internet as its physical size and information capacity increases.

Research is being conducted into:
• power consumption of the internet, today and in the future;
• impact of new internet systems and services on power consumption;
• power consumption in routers, line equipment and other network infrastructure;
• technologies and network architectures for minimising power consumption;
• general strategies for power minimisation; and
• modelling the internet and its power consumption.

A highly successful 'Symposium on Sustainability of the Internet and ICT' was hosted by CUBIN and its partners on November 25 & 26, 2008.

Faculty: Melbourne School of Engineering 

The CRC for Irrigation Futures comprises 13 partners including the University of Melbourne (Faculty of Engineering and Melbourne School of Land and Environment). Its overall research and training mission is to continuously improve irrigation policy, tools and practices to make irrigation more sustainable.

At the University of Melbourne researchers are working on:

• system harmonisation through regional irrigation business partnerships to identify opportunities for improved management of surface and groundwater resources, to satisfy environmental and consumptive demand in catchments with irrigation industries.
• irrigation toolkits to improve enterprise performance and deliver innovation to the on-farm irrigation sector to improve production, profitability and sustainability of irrigation enterprises. The program brings together three focused research and development areas that will make a difference to on-farm irrigation performance in Australia.

Faculty: Melbourne School of Engineering 

eWater CRC is developing technologies and knowledge that will enhance the ability of the water and catchment management sector to make management decisions that are cost-effective, transparent, and scientifically defendable.  It has research and development programs in the areas of:

• catchments and climate;
• ecological management;
• river systems;
• urban systems; and
• education and training

Faculty: Economics and Commerce
Director: Prof. David Merrett and Prof. Howard Dick

Australian business employs a culturally diverse workforce. It also operates in a culturally diverse global world, including the Asia Pacific region. This interdisciplinary initiative studies numerous aspects of international business operation, including a focus on governance. Its research calls for research expertise in both business-government relations and business management. The focus is on awareness of international contexts and quality management and monitoring within them for the sake of resilient corporate practices and competitive results.  

Faculty: Economics and Commerce
Director: Professor Stephen Sedgwick

The focus of the Melbourne Institute is:

• applied macroeconomic research;
• labour economics and social policy; and
• applied industrial economic research; and
• health economics research.

Alongside the core discipline – economics – the centre engages with sociologists, statisticians, demographers and management, accounting and finance specialists.

The renowned datasets of the HILDA survey provide a significant evidence base for social policy in Australia.

Faculty: Melbourne School of Engineering 
Director: Professor John Langford

Uniwater is a joint initiative of Monash University and the University of Melbourne. It is a small unit that acts as an incubator/hub for research activities in water, with an emphasis on complex, inter-disciplinary activities. As well as conducting new research in water, Uniwater plays a strong role in creating practical applied knowledge; it attempts to bring together information, insight and understanding in forums involving a range of interested stakeholders. The aim of these forums is to create an active exchange of ideas and responses.

Uniwater activities are directed to four key water challenges, in a context of climate change and increased competition for water:

• developing effective water policies and institutions for 21st century, including planning, governance, accounting, regulation, markets and services, as well as ensuring the necessary reforms in a federation
• maximising the environmental return on investment in repair of rivers, groundwater and catchments.
• realising the potential of irrigated and dryland agriculture using less water, and having regard to effective: economic performance, environmental impact, resource use efficiency, and social support.
• providing reliable water supplied to Australia's growing cities in sustainable ways.

Currently the University of Melbourne team has a range of research areas, these are:

Dairy Interest Group:

This project addresses three objectives:

1. to build a shared picture among University of Melbourne researchers and others of their research and industry support activities in dairy and associated rural projects.
2. to identify opportunities in the short-term for the University of Melbourne to make a more effective contribution to knowledge transfer activities in dairy and community health, including possible contributions from an extended researcher group.
3. to explore the benefits of inter-faculty contributions to a longer-term plan for a University of Melbourne: Dairy Australia partnership.

Farms, Rivers & Markets
A Whole-of-System Approach to Doing More With Less Water

The Farms, Rivers & Markets project encompasses three components:

1. farms - which use irrigation water as part of the production system
2. rivers and groundwater - which need to be managed together to meet environmental and production needs
3. markets - which require greater sharing of information to promote choice, innovation and efficiency.

Geoffery Gardiner Dairy Foundation
Improving water efficiency in dairy grazing pastures.

The vision for this project is to make a major contribution to the productivity and sustainability of dairy grazing activities by:

• establishing the practical potential of new technologies
• exploring the ways in which this potential can be harnessed to benefit the production system and the environment; and
• developing an ongoing dialogue with farmers to guide and utilise the findings of the research.