Purpose of the award
This scheme is designed to support the research activities of unfunded ADSA Ltd members whose research has been disrupted by the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Grants of A$500 are awarded to support specific research projects and/or outcomes.
Eligibility
This Scheme is open to unfunded ADSA Ltd members who have either renewed their membership for 2021 or were a member in 2020, recognising that not all members are currently able to renew their membership. In this context, unfunded is taken to mean currently enrolled postgraduate students, or members not currently in ongoing academic employment.
Criteria and Judging
Applications for the Scheme will be assessed against the following criteria, adapted from the ARC DECRA scheme, with each being weighted equally:
- What is the potential for the research to contribute to the field of Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies?
- What is the applicant’s track record (relative to opportunity), and how have they utilised previous funding sources (if available)?
- Do the project’s design and proposed use of funding create confidence in the timely and successful completion of the project?
- Will the proposed research be cost-effective and value for money?
The applications will be assessed by a specially convened judging panel.
Download further details and application procedure here.
NOTE: Applications for Round 2 are now open, and close on 1 October 2021. Also note, the application procedure still states 1 September as the deadline, please disregard this.
Prize Winners (Round 1, 2021)
Dr Natalie Lazaroo
This project will examine how the creation of a digital performance can enact “new intimacies” in the digital space and speak back to the unequal effect of COVID-19 restrictions on disadvantaged youth. By documenting the work and interviewing participants, the research examines how drama allows for an increasing conscientisation among disadvantaged youth, providing opportunities for enhancing their critical awareness and the pertinent issues affecting them. The research builds on a long-term collaboration with a group of young people using drama and performance as strategies of resistance in Singapore, where civic activism has long come under strict control. There is a pressing need to examine how recent global and intersecting crises require scrutiny into the relationship between “theatre-making and an evolving sense of youth citizenship in troubled times” (Gallagher 422), and this research contributes to scholarship by considering the specific cultural and political challenges of doing so from a Singapore context.
Dr Sean Mulcahy
Law and performance studies is an emerging field that examines law through the prism of performance research and practice. This project is a podcast series featuring interviews with practitioners and scholars working in the intersections of law and performance, conducted in accordance with human research ethics criteria. The interview series will make a valuable contribution to the emerging field of law and performance studies, particularly in its exploration of performance-based research into law. This builds on prior interviews conducted as part of my doctoral research (one of which was published in the Exchanges journal). As with past interviews, I intend to use content from the interviews in future publications and presentations, which will grow the nascent scholarship within the field. This project is part of an ongoing interest in creating dialogue between legal scholarship and performance practice, with the idea that the one can illuminate the other.
