[Aqualist] ARC announces Future Fellowships for 2025

[Simon Haberle]

Dear AQUA members,

The ARC have announced this year’s recipients of the ARC Future Fellowships. Successful projects broadly related to Quaternary research (including archaeology) are listed below, and as always, congratulations to those who were successful.

Overall, there where 8 FFs funded to around $9M (compared to last year when there were 4 FFs totalling $4M), with projects ranging from archaeology of our nearest neighbours, long term climate change impacts and mammal extinction.

It is also important to acknowledge the huge amount of effort and sacrifice of time that is required to submit these grants. To those who were not successful, thank you for continuing to generate great ideas and push the boundaries of our disciplines. Hopefully there will be future opportunities to fund the great work you are doing.

Regards,
Prof Simon Haberle
Professor of Natural History & Palaeoecology
School of Culture, History and Language
The Australian National University


The successful projects are listed below:

Australian National University

Dr Ben Shaw (FT240100522)
Multicultural frontiers and human histories on the fringe of tropical Sahul.
This project aims to transform our understanding of deep-time human histories on the fringe of eastern Papua New Guinea that contributed to the peopling of Oceania, the Australia-New Guinea continent of Sahul, and the region as a global diversity hotspot. It expects to generate new knowledge about the role of cross-cultural interaction in this process by linking interdisciplinary archaeological and traditional data in preserved coastal landscapes that were key corridors of mobility. Expected outcomes include reframing New Guinea in human history models and development of novel interpretive frameworks. Benefits include enhancing Australia's capacity to manage a shared multi-cultural heritage, and strengthening inclusive Pacific partnerships.
$1,061,123.00

Dr Ceri Shipton (FT240100198)
Stepping-Stones to Sahul.
This project aims to determine if there were two human dispersals into Australia, and whether the second had an adaptive advantage. The project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of human dispersal, through excavation then combined technological and functional analysis of stone tools. Excepted outcomes of this project are to establish if stone tool miniaturisation reflects a significant threshold in human population density, technology, or social organisation. This should provide important benefits to Australian society such as addressing the complexity of deep time history of the country, and determining whether the later Palaeolithic represents a fundamental behavioural threshold for humanity in general.
$1,206,875.00


University of Melbourne

Dr Andrew King (FT240100306)
Understanding climate change beyond net-zero.
We have a broad understanding of how the climate will evolve under continued greenhouse gas emissions, but we know surprisingly little about how the climate will behave if we achieve our policy goals and reach net-zero or net-negative emissions. This project aims to fill a major knowledge gap through using new earth system model simulations to investigate the evolution of regional climates, variability in the climate system and the likelihood of damaging extreme events under different net-zero and net-negative emissions scenarios. The goals of this work are to help prepare Australia for the climate changes we can expect from decarbonisation and to illustrate the climate impacts of humanity's choices in our path to a low-carbon future.
1,034,602.00


University of Tasmania

A/Prof Joanne Whittaker (FT240100473)
What lies beneath: how the deep mantle influences the Antarctic surface.
This project will investigate how processes deep beneath Earth's surface have led to elevation change in the land below the Antarctic ice sheets. Current and future climate change have the potential to melt large portions of the East Antarctic ice sheet, which will contribute strongly to sea level rise. The height of the land below the ice sheets plays a big role in controlling how vulnerable the ice is to melting. A key way to test climate models is to train them on past warm periods. This project will reconstruct ancient elevations caused by changes in deep Earth to model past ice sheet behaviour. The expected benefit of this project is to improve the precision of models that predict future changes to ice sheets and sea level.
$1,209,912.00


Flinders University

Dr Martin Polkinghorne (FT240100856)
Resilience and Relocation: Unravelling the end of Angkor.
This project addresses the unresolved issue of Angkor's decline, among the largest pre-industrial cities on Earth, by examining human settlement, landscape management, and resilience to climatic and demographic changes. Employing novel methods in archaeology, geoscience, and history, and building upon twenty-five years of Australian-led research in Cambodia, I will lead a team to interpret Angkor's decline as a distinct socio-cultural event, rather than a simple 'collapse.' The focus is on Srei Santhor, a pivotal site where Angkor's elites sought to ensure food security and maintain political authority amidst an agricultural crisis. Our findings will reveal key insights into societal evolution, modelling long-term socioeconomic trends.
$1,211,132.00

A/Prof Robin Beck (FT240100422)
Quantifying the long-term resilience of Australian mammal communities.
This project aims to use the fossil record of mammals and new methods to study how mammal communities in Australia have changed over the last 25 million years. This project expects to provide major new data showing how biodiversity is assembled, maintained, and lost over time. Expected outcomes include new knowledge regarding the resilience of Australian mammal communities to extinction and environmental changes, and identifying when there have been major shifts in the way in which they have functioned. It will help predict how the modern Australian mammal fauna will respond to the current extinction crisis and to projected climate change. This information can be used to develop more effective conservation strategies. $1,194,104.00


University of Western Australia

Dr Ingrid Ward (FT240100224)
Tracing cultural continuities in West Australia's ancient coastal wetlands.
The project explores the impact of Post-glacial sea-level rise on ancestral coastal wetlands along Western Australia's southern coast. Through comprehensive surveying, coring, and immersive 3D visualizations, the project aims to map changing coastal palaeogeography and historical biodiversity, providing valuable insights into cultural narratives and songlines. Long-term records of wetland ecology and fire history will be obtained through high-resolution analyses, including ancient environmental DNA, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and plant biomarker analyses. Findings will guide adaptive management strategies to safeguard the ecological and cultural significance of coastal and marine landscapes in the face of future environmental change. $1,045,059.00


University of Queensland

Dr Justyna Miszkiewicz (FT240100030)
Why do we lose bone mass? Social and temporal dynamics of a silent disease.
This project aims to address why modern human bones are weak and lose mass easily. By applying a first-ever social and evolutionary framework alongside classic microscopy and state-of-the-art particle accelerator methods to ancient and modern skeletons from England and Australia, this project aims to assess how fundamental cell mechanisms that build and destroy bone have responded to social changes over the last millennium. Expected outcomes include identifying interdisciplinary theories about how social hierarchies influence bone quality. Future benefits include aiding in the assessment of how social disadvantage and evolution affect the incidence of bone diseases, critical for developing wellbeing strategies in Australia and beyond. $1,060,797.00