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Holding Country: Centring First Peoples’ sovereignty and self-determination in conservation land negotiations
No full textThis project focuses on Victorian examples of private land hand back to First Peoples from conservation organisations, landholders and other governance actors. It reports on focused research and participatory workshops with Victorian Traditional Owner Corporations, First Peoples and other key actors in the sector. The aim of this work is to improve both understanding and actionable pathways to better enable First Peoples to own, access and manage private conservation lands in ways that support the asserting of sovereignty and the enabling of self-determination. We present emerging insights and recommend models and resources that can be built on in the future.Our primary focus is on negotiations and partnerships related to the large and important private land estate. However, our research covers a range of land-use history, tenure, and governance models, including relationships with state actors. While this phase of research focuses on land, we recognise that similar research is needed to explore First Peoples’-led water governance.</p
The Fundamental Structure of All Things
No full textBackground Minimalist game design is a key approach among independent and hobbyist game makers. Employing aesthetic and ludic reduction, minimalist games utilise implication to invite players into the meaning-making process, and focus attention for shortform affective thrills (Boxerman, et al. 2011). Due to their shorter development cycles and reduced labour demands, they are also a popular way for individuals and small teams to experiment with mechanics and aesthetics that would otherwise be considered too financially risky for large-scale, commercial game development (Lankes 2020; Fouché 2024). Contribution My game “The Fundamental Structure of All Things” demonstrates how minimalism as a game design method can also be used as a site for creative inquiry into videogame form itself. Informed by Morris (1968) and Judd’s (1965) complicating of distinctions between painting and sculpture, the game deliberately straddles the line between game design and interactive art. It has players guiding a basic geometric circle across a field of flat colour, where they may couple with computer-controlled characters as they appear on-screen, connecting their movement. After five minutes of real time, the game ends, regardless of the player’s actions. The game thus omits the win/lose conditions, reward and punishment motives, and conventional challenge of traditional game design (Schell 2008; Fullerton 2004; Salen & Zimmerman 2003). In doing so, it articulates how minimalist game design can interrogate the dogmas and margins of videogame form. Significance “The Fundamental Structure of All Things” was selected for exhibition at the Replaying Japan 2025 conference through a double-blind peer review process. It was playable for the duration of the three day conference from September 1-3, 2025, which was attended by an international cohort of Australian and Japanese game makers and scholars. The game was also accompanied by a five minute lighting talk delivered on the second day of the conference to a live audience of game makers, scholars, and critics.</p
Psychopomp
No full textBackgroundMy research explores the perverse interface between bodies and the contemporary media landscape. The broad field of this research is ‘art & technology’ and the narrow field is ‘representations of the body’. In addition the research relates to the discourses of media, photography and the emerging field of AI generated Art ContributionMy contribution was 4 photographic prints. The research identifies a gap in the knowledge of the relationship of AI and contemporary art and the human body. The work explores themes of body abjection, the uncanny and uncomfortable using outdated AI software so as to avoid the generic plastic and highly realistic look of so much of AI imagery. My work depicts the body as full of errors and mistakes. The theme of the exhibition Psychopomp, a guider of souls, and AI operating here as a kind of in-between zone of the living and the dead Significance The exhibition will be the inaugural exhibition at the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography, in Johannesburg, South Africa and is a highly significant event, being one of the first curated shows of AI at the prestigious Roger Ballen centre for photography. The work was selected and curated by international art curator Boris Eldagsen. In addition it received support from The School of Art at RMIT research funding. Numerous press articles covered the exhibition.</p
Design of 2D and 3D Nanomaterials for Storage and Sensing Applications
No full textEndohedrally doped aluminium clusters have emerged as promising candidates in materials science due to their tuneable electronic and structural properties that mimic super-atoms. Among them, Al13 clusters, particularly those doped with various metal and non-metal atoms, have gained attention for their enhanced chemical reactivity and thermal stability. Using first-principles molecular dynamics, the structural stability of Al12X (X = Li, Be, B, C, N, Na, Mg, Si, P, K, Ca, Ti, V, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Y, Mo, Ru, Rh, and W) clusters was systematically investigated, revealing that dopants such as K, Ca, Ti, V, Fe, Co, Ni, Y, Mo, Ru, and W destabilize the cluster's endohedral configuration. However, clusters doped with Li, Be, B, C, N, Na, Mg, Si, P, Cu, Zn, and Rh retained endohedral positions and showed notable thermal stability, especially Al12C, Al12Si, Al12B, and Al12Zn, which preserved the icosahedral structure, while Al12Cu and Al12Li showed enhanced stability at higher spin states. Motivated by the global push toward sustainable energy, these clusters were further studied for ammonia storage. Anchoring pristine and doped Al clusters on graphene sheets, it was found that endohedral doping notably enhances cluster stability, transforming endothermic to exothermic adsorption behaviour. Al12C-c4 emerged as the most stable complex, capable of adsorbing up to 24 NH3 molecules, with adsorption energies aligning with known materials. Extending the scope to environmental remediation, the adsorption performance of these graphene-supported Al clusters was evaluated for gases like CO, CO2, CH4, H2S, H2, and H2O. Al12Zn-c4 displayed superior adsorption energies for CO, CO2, and H2O, while Al12B-c3 and Al12C-c3 were identified for selective H2 and CO2 capture, respectively. Furthermore, the catalytic potential of these materials was assessed for CO2 reduction, where Al12B-c4 exhibited the lowest energy barrier (0.46 eV) in the CO2 to CH3OH conversion step, suggesting efficient catalysis for methanol production, while other dopants showed higher barriers. In parallel, porous coordination networks such as PCN-250 were explored for syngas purification. The Fe2M (M = Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Zn) trimetallic nodes showed selectivity toward CO, CO2, and H2O, with Fe(III)2Co(II) displaying the strongest CO binding and Fe(III)2Ni(II) the weakest H2 interaction, favourable for extracting pure hydrogen. These findings underline the versatile application of doped nanoclusters and coordination networks in energy storage, catalysis, and environmental remediation, offering a pathway for future experimental development.</p
House of Heat: Materials for Coexistence
No full textResearch Background: House of Heat: Materials for Coexistence advances industrial design research into participatory and curatorial practices that activate public engagement for regenerative futures. It draws on Claire Bishop’s Participation (2006) and Ezio Manzini’s Design, When Everybody Designs (2015) to position collective making and gathering as experiential pathways to distributed socio-ecological agency, reflecting debates in CoDesign and the biennial Participatory Design Conference. Building on the ontology developed in Designing Conditions for Coexistence (Cotsaftis et al., Design Studies, 2023), the project expands opportunities to explore regenerative practices by staging exhibition-making as a shared inquiry into coexistence across human and environmental systems. Research Contribution: Curated and produced by Cotsaftis in partnership with Williams (UNSW) and D’Sylva (Hyloh), the exhibition brought together design researchers, creative practitioners, and entrepreneurs to enact material-led coexistence. The exhibition operated as both research platform and public action, translating regenerative theory into sensory, performative encounters. It advances industrial design’s participatory approaches by evidencing how curatorial frameworks function as research methods—enabling cultural literacy, collaboration, and social imagination around regenerative practice. Research Significance: Commissioned and hosted by MPavilion, Australia’s leading architectural commission and public platform for critical engagement with contemporary design, the project demonstrates excellence in applied research with academic, industry, and civic reach. Supported by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, it attracted around 250 participants and featured contributors including Future reMADE, Hyloh, and Neomatter. It stands as a benchmark for how design research translates regenerative frameworks into participatory, public forms of practice, informing emerging discourse in regenerative design.</p
Solid Yarns
No full textBackgroundThis research sits within participatory design and audio documentary practice, using podcasting as a method for dialogue and reflection at the cultural interface (Nakata 2007). Solid Yarns draws on two-way approaches to co-design (St John 2026) that centre relational exchange between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges. While dialogue, care and reciprocity are ethical foundations for co-design, evaluation in participatory design remains under-developed and rarely disseminated (Nguyen et al. 2024). Solid Yarns addresses this gap by exploring podcasting as a relational medium for two-way evaluation and reflective dialogue within First Nations creative collaborations. Contribution Solid Yarns (2025) is a five-part podcast series co-produced by Dr Nicola St John (RMIT University) and Janak Rogers (RMIT School of Media and Communication) in partnership with Solid Lines, Australia’s first Indigenous-led illustration agency. Each episode records conversations between First Nations artists and their industry collaborators, reflecting on how trust, cultural protocols and Indigenous Cultural & Intellectual Property (ICIP) are negotiated in practice. The project develops podcasting as a two-way collaborative and evaluative method. It contributes new frameworks for participatory evaluation that are relational, situated, and dialogical, where knowledge is generated through conversation rather than measurement. Significance Funded through the competitive Alastair Swayn Foundation design audio grant, Solid Yarns exemplifies RMIT’s Responsible Practice strategic priority. It has been featured within national media, including National Indigenous Times, Radio Today, and RMIT News, and was selected for Spotify’s First Nations Podcast Shelf. By documenting real-world First Nations collaborations, the series sets new precedents for culturally safe, sovereign design practice and demonstrates how creative audio research can foster dialogue, reflection and systemic change across Australia’s design industries.</p
Understanding and Reasoning with Numerical Information in the Era of Large Language Models
No full textNumbers play a crucial role in textual communication, providing precision and clarity across diverse domains. While numerical reasoning has been widely explored in mathematical problem-solving, limited research has examined the broader challenges of processing numerical information expressed in natural language. Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities in understanding and generating text, yet their ability to interpret, extract, and reason with numerical information beyond mathematical contexts remains underexplored. This thesis addresses this gap by systematically analyzing how numerical information is conveyed in text and by evaluating LLMs’ capabilities in numerical information processing and reasoning.This thesis is guided by four key questions that collectively examine the challenges of numerical information processing. First, it investigates how effectively Natural Language Processing (NLP) and information retrieval (IR) models can retrieve numerical information or information associated with numerical values. Based on two studies in the clinical domain, namely SemEval NLI4CT and TREC Clinical Trial, it is revealed that both IR models (which rely on term matching) and NLP models (which rely on semantic similarity) remain inadequate for the task of numerical information retrieval. Second, it explores how numerical information is expressed in natural language and the different types of meaning it conveys. This thesis introduces a taxonomy of numerical information that categorizes how numbers appear in text and their semantic interpretations, validated through a human annotation study. Third, it examines how numerical reasoning can be conceptualized and evaluated in the era of large language models. It reviews recent research trends showing that most numerical reasoning studies focus narrowly on mathematical problem-solving. To extend this perspective, the thesis proposes a taxonomy of numerical reasoning that encompasses key reasoning components such as numerical operations, number sense, numerical knowledge, linguistic factors, and number representation. Finally, it assesses the extent to which LLMs demonstrate numeracy in understanding and reasoning with numerical information embedded in text. To address the fourth question, it explores LLMs’ numeracy by developing benchmarks that evaluate fundamental numerical skills (e.g., arithmetic, number comparison, normalization), a subset of the skills defined in the proposed taxonomy. These benchmarks are formulated as Natural Language Inference (NLI) tasks to assess whether LLMs can comprehend and reason about numerical information in text. The analysis reveals that while most LLMs can identify correct entailments, they often fail to correctly reject incorrect conclusions involving numerical information, misclassifying contradiction and neutral cases.The contributions of this thesis include the introduction of structured taxonomies for numerical information and numerical reasoning, the development of new benchmarks for evaluating numerical reasoning in LLMs, and a comprehensive analysis of LLMs’ strengths and limitations in numeracy. By addressing these critical aspects, this work provides insights into how well modern NLP models understand and reason with numerical data and lays the foundation for future research on improving numeracy in LLMs.</p
Easter Eggs and Scotch Whiskey: the role of religious self- identity on (in)congruent holiday promotions
No full textPurpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate consumer reactions to brands that present elements both congruent and incongruent with their core identities. This study examines the internal conflict consumers experience when encountering these mixed elements and how this affects their perceptions and affiliations. Two studies explore how consumers navigate this mix, the effect on their self-continuity and the impact on their patronage intentions toward the store. Design/methodology/approach – Using a 2 × 2 × continuous between-subjects experimental design, two studies empirically test the interaction between religious identity, congruent versus incongruent promotions and the effect of product congruence with the promotions and religious identity on their collective impact on customer intentions to patronize. This study also explores and elucidates the underlying mechanism of self-continuity as a mediator in this context. Findings – This research reveals that even when a holiday promotion aligns with a consumer’s religious identity, inconsistencies between the promotion and the product type can still lead to unfavorable reactions, particularly among individuals with strong religious identities. This study also identifies self-continuity as the psychological mechanism behind consumer evaluations of brands and establishments and the importance of self-continuity in consumption situations for customers. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore how consumers handle the nuanced dynamics between marketing elements that simultaneously align and misalign with their religious beliefs. This study reveals a complex three-way interaction, emphasizing the negative impact on brands when consumers are presented with promotional symbols and products that simultaneously align and conflict with their religious identity, offering valuable insights into consumer behavior for formulating informed brand strategies.</p
Developing a Dosimetry Audit for Existing and Emerging Methods of Respiratory Motion Management in Radiation Therapy
No full textRespiratory motion presents a significant challenge in external beam radiation therapy (RT), particularly for thoracic and abdominal treatment sites. Accurate dose delivery is critical for achieving local control of disease. Motion management refers to a diverse suite of techniques used to account for or mitigate the impact of respiration-induced anatomical shifts. Techniques vary in technical detail and complexity, resulting in a unique set of uncertainties impacting each step treatment chain (from simulation, planning, to image guidance and delivery) differently.
Dosimetry audits serve as essential tools for assessing and improving the accuracy of RT, yet no national-scale audit for respiratory motion management currently exists in Australia and New Zealand. This is in part due to the lack of time-resolution in current commercial treatment planning systems, leading to the dynamic measurement problem: measurements conducted in a moving frame of reference cannot be directly compared to dose calculations in a static frame of reference. This thesis presents the design, development, and implementation of a national-scale end-to-end dosimetry audit tailored to respiratory motion management. The audit was developed with the Australian Clinical Dosimetry Service (ACDS) and is intended to establish minimum standards of accuracy for treatments involving motion management.
The research was conducted in three stages: (1) defining the scope of the audit based on clinical needs, (2) designing and validating a novel phantom and measurement system, and (3) evaluating the audit’s performance through experimental studies and field trials. A national survey of RT facilities informed the audit’s design, revealing that passive motion management and breath-hold gating are the most commonly used techniques. The audit phantom was designed to simulate both lung and liver treatment sites, accommodate various motion management strategies, and enable simultaneous acquisition of motion-coupled and motion-decoupled radiochromic film measurements.
A key challenge addressed in this work is the dynamic measurement problem. This thesis proposes and validates two complementary solutions: (1) region-of-interest (ROI) gamma analysis in motion-coupled (moving) films, and (2) while the motion-decoupled (static) films enable an assessment of the extra-target dose distributions. Bespoke dose-to-medium correction factors (kmed) were derived from Monte Carlo simulations to convert the measured film signal to the quantity reported by the TPS (dose-to-medium), and experimentally validated.
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The audit’s sensitivity and specificity were quantified through controlled experiments involving known planning and delivery errors. The proposed ACDS scoring methods demonstrated superior error classification compared to existing standards, enabling robust detection of clinically relevant discrepancies. Field trials conducted at ten RT facilities across Australia confirmed the audit’s compatibility with diverse hardware and software systems, and preliminary dosimetry results showed sensitivity to errors across multiple motion management techniques.
This thesis concludes that the ACDS motion management audit is a world-leading initiative that addresses a critical gap in RT quality assurance. It offers a modular framework for benchmarking motion management practices, with the potential to improve treatment accuracy and patient outcomes by establishing minimum standards for accuracy, which have not previously been defined in a clinically meaningful context. Future work will focus on greater efficiency and compatibility through design improvements, expanding the audit’s scope to emerging techniques, and refining assessment criteria.</p
Longitudinal effects of the built environment on transportation and recreational walking and differences by age and sex: A systematic review
No full textNon-communicable diseases (NCDs) and physical inactivity, a well-established risk factor, are prevalent in high-income countries. Walking is an effective means of improving population physical activity levels. Previous, mostly cross-sectional research finds that the built environment encourages or discourages walking for transport and recreation, with this association varying for different age groups and sexes. The objective of this systematic review is to synthesise longitudinal evidence to better understand the built environment in determining transport and recreational walking for men, women, working aged adults, and older adults in high-income countries. A systematic literature search for peer-reviewed journal articles in English was carried out using seven electronic databases. To be included, studies had to be conducted in a high-income country, employed a longitudinal design, used objectively measured neighbourhood attributes, and quantitatively assessed how the built environment impacts transport and recreational walking for adults. The methodological quality of the studies was evaluated using an established instrument. In total, 23 longitudinal studies published between 2012 and 2022 were identified. Notably, the evidence was inconclusive for age- and sex-specific population sub-groups due to the limited number of studies. However, in the general population, we found prospective evidence more consistently supporting the idea that increasing street connectivity, destination accessibility, and access to transit contribute to higher levels of transport walking. Furthermore, we found mixed evidence for the associations of road attributes and residential density with transport walking, as well as for street connectivity and destination accessibility with recreational walking. The findings of the review emphasize the importance of designing neighbourhoods supportive of transport and recreational walking to increase physical activity and, therefore, mitigate NCDs in high-income countries. Further longitudinal studies are needed to investigate how changes in built environment attributes influence transport and recreational walking differently among males, females, working aged adults, and older adults.</p