Open Access Theses

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  • ItemOpen Access
    The Digital Pre-Clinic: Governmentality and Expertise in Australian Mental Healthcare
    (2025) Hemmings, Ben
    Over the past decade, digital peer support services have become a vital element of Australia's mental health system. Promoted by the non-profit organisations that provide them as a way of connecting people with "shared experiences" of mental ill-health, these services have emerged within Australian public health as a key intervention in the management of the emergent category of "mild mental illness"; a state of minor mental ill-health conceived by public health authorities as a state of ill-health preceding clinical pathology. Employing a governmentality approach, this thesis analyses the efforts of Australian public health and digital peer support service providers to shape, guide and regulate the conduct of Australians through these digital services. To do so, this thesis draws on qualitative research into two Australian digital peer support services: the Beyond Blue forums and Canteen Connect. Conducted throughout 2020-21, I undertook semi-structured interviews with lead moderators of these services and two Australian epidemiologists working in the field of digital mental health. Alongside this, I analysed key documents produced by Beyond Blue and Canteen, government authorities and epidemiologists. Through analysis of this material, I argue that in response to the problems of the deinstitutionalisation of mental healthcare and the internet, Australian public health authorities transformed online health forums into mental health services that provide "digital peer support". I contend that this transformation produced these peer-to-peer sites as delivering what I term 'pre-clinical care', a form of support aimed at those who are constituted as not sick enough to require clinical care but could become sicker if left unattended. Following this, the thesis examines how these service providers attempt to deliver this pre-clinical care and the consequences of these practices. In this section of the thesis, I illustrate how these sites construct mild mental illness as a state of risk and ill-health, manageable through monitoring one's own and others' emotional states, productivity, and concentration; how the 'person with lived experiences' emerges within through sites as an 'expert healthcare consumer', operating to legitimise medical authority; and the ways in which these sites participate in processes of territorialisation, resulting in the formation of distinctly Australian online mental health forums. In this way, this thesis is not only a critical investigation of digital peer support services, it is also an examination of peer expertise, mental healthcare, the internet and government in contemporary Australian society. Ultimately it argues that minor mental ill-health has become a central site of concern and intervention for Australian public health, one in which authorities seek to manage populations through the production of a subject who acts to protect and secure both their own mental health and that of others.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Advancing Electrochemical Performance of Li-S Batteries: Strategies for Polysulfide Immobilization and Catalytic Enhancement
    (2025) Gu, Huimin
    Lithium-sulfur batteries are regarded as a promising next-generation energy storage system, featuring a theoretical energy density that is five to ten times higher than that of conventional Li-ion battery (LIB) cathode material. Furthermore, natural abundance, low cost, and environmental benignity make sulfur an appealing candidate for sustainable energy solutions. Despite the potential of Lithium-sulfur batteries, their commercialization is hindered by several challenges. One major issue is the shuttle effect of soluble long-chain lithium polysulfides (LiPSs), which migrate uncontrollably through the electrolyte, leading to rapid capacity fade, poor sulfur utilization, and severe corrosion of the lithium anode. Furthermore, the sluggish redox kinetics of LiPSs exacerbate these issues, reducing the overall electrochemical efficiency. Additionally, sulfur's intrinsically poor electrical conductivity and the significant volume expansion during charging-discharging create mechanical instability in the cathode. These combined factors significantly impair the long-term cycling stability, Coulombic efficiency, and overall performance, limiting their feasibility for practical application. This thesis explores strategies for immobilizing lithium polysulfides and enhancing electrocatalytic activity in Lithium-sulfur batteries to improve overall performance. The first project investigated the energy losses induced by modified membranes in Lithium-sulfur batteries. By utilizing a commercial PP separator, energy density decreases by 20% when overpotentials exceed 250 mV in a Lithium-sulfur battery. Symmetric cell with lithium metal as electrode measurements demonstrates that certain types of membranes (GO, MoS2, and rGO) display overpotentials surpassing 250 mV at a 1C rate. This issue becomes more pronounced when these membranes are tested within H-cells with Li2S6 as catholyte. Fabrication and testing of the porous membrane with an induced level of mesoporosity and modeling confirm that the overpotentials stem from physical obstruction of lithium-ion transport, revealing the need to compromise between soluble polysulfide blocking and energy loss. The second study was designed to redefine the approach to enhance Lithium-sulfur battery performance by emphasizing the significant role lithium-ion plays in sulfur redox reactions (SRR). Traditional membrane design strategies focus on managing the migration of lithium polysulfides (LiPSs) and catalyzing the sulfur redox reactions (SRR). However, the critical influence of lithium-ion transport on SRR kinetics is often neglected. A novel holey graphene membrane, embedded with Co9S8 (Co9S8/HG) was designed to facilitate rapid lithium-ion diffusion and efficient polysulfide conversion. This approach tackles the notorious shuttle effect of LiPSs and significantly improves SRR kinetics, overcoming the limitations of conventional membrane designs that impede lithium-ion movement. The cell incorporated with Co9S8/HG/PP achieved a notable discharge capacity of 671 mAh/g over 900 cycles at 0.2C and exhibited robust rate performance, maintaining 784 mAh/g capacity when switching from 2C to 0.2C. In the third project, we incorporated holey Co3S4 nanosheets into the sulfur composite cathodes to enhance the conversion kinetics of LiPSs by facilitating rapid lithium-ion diffusion. Through overpotential measurements, Tafel plots, and lithium-ion diffusion coefficient analysis, we compared the electrocatalytic efficiency of the synthesized materials which exhibit varying particle sizes and porous structures due to their formation at various temperatures. These studies have uncovered several previously unexplored challenges, which will inspire research in the sustainable energy storage field.
  • ItemOpen Access
    A Question That Does Not Arise: Operation Sovereign Borders and Notions of Sovereignty in Australia
    (2025) Saraswati, Donna
    This research examines extraordinary measures in immigration policy through Operation Sovereign Borders. Despite being a signatory to the Refugee Conventions, Australia has employed military-led turn-back operations to prevent asylum seekers from arriving by boat. Given that it continues to turn back boats, a question arises regarding whether Australia is genuinely committed to its obligations. If not, why does it remain a signatory? The research highlights how Operation Sovereign Borders builds on earlier policies, particularly the Pacific Solution, but signifies a shift in tone and intensity with its emphasis on sovereignty. Drawing on Carl Schmitt’s concept of sovereignty and the friend-enemy distinction, the research argues that Operation Sovereign Borders reflects a sovereign enforcement of power through the government’s demonstrated ability to disregard rules and norms. Two levels at which this friend-enemy distinction operates—domestic and international—are identified, illustrating how it is reinforced within Australia’s political community. Operation Sovereign Borders, then, is interpreted as a “state of exception” where legal norms are suspended to demonstrate the government’s capacity to project sovereignty. The research concludes that Australia ultimately undermines its legitimacy as a liberal democratic state due to its definition of sovereignty in decisionist terms and the dehumanization of its political enemy.
  • ItemOpen Access
    The Use of High Rising Terminals in First- and Second-Generation Mandarin-Background Australians
    (2025) Liu, Chengjin
    This study investigated the use of High Rising Terminals (HRTs)—final rising pitch contours on declarative utterances—among three speaker groups in Australia: first-generation (Gen 1) Mandarin-background Australians, second-generation (Gen 2) Australians from Mandarin-speaking families, and Anglo-Celtic Australians. While HRTs have been widely studied in varieties such as Australian, New Zealand, and American English, their use for ethnolectal purposes remains underexplored. Drawing on spontaneous speech from sociolinguistic interviews, the study examined variation in HRT frequency across ethnic and generational lines, with preliminary analyses of phonetic realisation (rise excursion, rise alignment) and pragmatic function. Results showed that Gen 2 speakers exhibit the highest HRT frequency, followed by Gen 1 speakers, with Anglo speakers showing the lowest usage. A preliminary phonetic and pragmatic analysis revealed that while all groups deploy HRTs for similar discourse functions—such as engagement- and comprehension-checking, turn-holding, stance softening, and epistemic uncertainty—Gen 1 speakers showed greater variation in rise excursion. These findings suggested broad convergence in function but also underlined the role of migration history and identity in shaping suprasegmental patterns. In doing so, the study contributed to the understanding of how prosody, ethnicity, and migrant generation interact in the evolving soundscape of Australian English.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Protecting the Islet Beta Cell
    (2025) Waters, Matthew
    Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic disease encompassing multiple metabolic disorders, caused by defective insulin secretion, insulin action or both. Type 1 diabetes (T1D), accounting for approximately 5-10% of cases, is a chronic autoimmune disease characterised by the immune-mediated destruction of insulin secreting pancreatic beta cells, causing insulin deficiency and the need for exogenous insulin. Type 2 diabetes (T2D), accounting for >85% of cases, is characterised by hyperglycaemia due to insufficient insulin secretion in the context of insulin resistance. Amino acids (AA) are known to increase glucose-stimulated insulin secretion and are elevated in the serum of people with obesity and diabetes. Protein enriched diets have been shown to increase the development of T1D in female NOD mice and reducing AA availability in C57BL/6 mice through knock out of Slc6a19 encoding the system B(0) neutral AA transporter AT1 (B0AT1), markedly reduced insulinaemia and improved glucose tolerance. There is growing evidence to suggest overlapping pathogenesis between the two major forms of DM and it has been postulated that obesity and insulin resistance may act as pathogenic drivers for islet autoimmunity. The NODk mouse is a T1D resistant sub-strain of the NOD T1D mouse model. However, in response to beta cell stress induced by beta cell specific expression of the hen egg lysozyme protein, male NODk mice develop hyperinsulinaemia followed by beta cell failure and hyperglycaemia. The hypothesis underpinning this thesis is that a hyper-responsive islet beta cell is an early pathogenic factor in hyperinsulinaemic subtypes of T2D, with relevance to the overlapping pathogenesis of T1D and T2D. The aims were to ascertain if altering the availability of protein/AAs would alter beta cell hyper-responsiveness and T1D development in (i) female and (ii) male NOD mice; and (iii) to determine the early effect of a stressor 5-day western-diet (WD) challenge on insulin secretion and the islet transcriptome in male NODk mice, compared to B10k and BALB/c mice. To assess the effects of AA offloading on T1D incidence, female chow diet (CD) fed NOD.Slc6a19+/+ and NOD.Slc6a19-/- mice were studied. While marked aminoaciduria was demonstrated in NOD.Slc6a19-/- mice, T1D incidence was not affected. To assess the effects of high fat diet (HFD) with high protein (HFHP), HFD with high sucrose (HFHS) and CD on the incidence of T1D, male NOD mice were studied. HFHS feeding resulted in greater weight gain, glucose intolerance and hyperinsulinaemia compared to HFHP and CD feeding, and surprisingly a lower incidence of T1D. AA offloading in male NOD mice did not alter T1D incidence, however, excess weight gain, hyperinsulinaemia and glucose intolerance on the HFHS diet were curtailed. Following 24-weeks of WD feeding, NODk mice developed hyperinsulinaemia and diabetes. This was accompanied by unfavourable lipid profiles and pancreatic histological evidence of apoptotic endocrine cells and reduced beta cell mass. Following a 5-day WD challenge, NODk compared to B10k and BALB/c comparator mice strains exhibited greater weight gain and markedly increased insulinaemia. Nutrient stimulated insulin secretion measured in isolated islets confirmed beta cell hyper-responsiveness in NODk mice. RNA sequencing in islets indicated that pathways of endoplasmic reticulum to golgi vesicle transport and insulin processing are altered in NODk mice. In conclusion, neither manipulation of dietary protein nor AA offloading altered the incidence of T1D in NOD mice. Slc6a19 deletion protected against HFHS diet induced weight gain and hyperinsulinaemia in male NOD mice, suggesting B0AT1 could be a pharmacological target for the treatment of metabolic syndrome and T2D. NODk mice represent a unique model of severe insulin resistant T2D and rapidly develop hyperinsulinaemia when fed a HFD, suggesting non-immune intrinsic islet susceptibility factors related to beta cell failure.
  • ItemOpen Access
    The Role of Emotion Regulation in the Context of Intolerance Uncertainty
    (2025) Sahib, Aseel
    This PhD thesis systematically explores the relationships between intolerance of uncertainty, emotion regulation, and emotional difficulties, addressing gaps in the literature. Intolerance of uncertainty is well-established as a transdiagnostic factor influencing emotional disorders; however, studies exploring how emotion regulation strategies mediate this relationship are often limited by cross-sectional designs, a focus on maladaptive over adaptive strategies, and single indirect mediation analyses that fail to capture multiple strategy use. Existing intolerance of uncertainty interventions are similarly limited by small sample sizes, a lack of community representation, insufficient inclusion of both anxiety and depression measures, and inadequate follow-up. The thesis aims to address these limitations by investigating intolerance of uncertainty, emotion regulation, and emotional difficulties through three studies. Chapter 1 introduces the central concepts, intolerance of uncertainty and emotion regulation, and provides a narrative review of existing literature, identifying limitations and setting out the thesis objectives. Chapter 2 presents a systematic review and meta-analysis examining both maladaptive and adaptive emotion regulation strategies in relation to intolerance of uncertainty. This review highlights overlooked adaptive strategies, offering a comprehensive understanding of emotion regulation's role in intolerance of uncertainty contexts and guiding the focus of subsequent studies. Chapter 3 builds on these findings with a longitudinal study examining intolerance of uncertainty, emotion regulation, and emotional difficulties. Results reveal that intolerance of uncertainty predicts anxiety over time, with rumination and thought suppression serving as significant mediators between intolerance of uncertainty and both anxiety and depression. Adaptive strategies, such as mindfulness and cognitive reappraisal, predicted lower anxiety and/or depression. Contrary to expectations, thought suppression was associated with reduced anxiety and depression. These findings clarify the specific emotion regulation strategies that link intolerance of uncertainty to emotional difficulties, particularly rumination and thought suppression, and underscore their role as potential intervention targets. Chapter 4 pilots two brief online interventions - behavioural activation (BA) and acceptance - designed to modify emotion regulation strategies in individuals with high intolerance of uncertainty. Based on Chapter 3's findings, BA was intended to mitigate rumination, while acceptance targeted thought suppression. Pre- and post-intervention changes in intolerance of uncertainty, anxiety, and depression were compared across intervention and control conditions, with follow-ups at 1 and 3 months. The acceptance intervention led to significant reductions in intolerance of uncertainty and anxiety at 1-month follow-up, with rumination mediating the effect on intolerance of uncertainty, anxiety, and depression up to 3 months. Thought suppression at 1-month mediated BA's effects on intolerance of uncertainty, anxiety, and depression at 3 months. These results indicate that brief, online interventions targeting emotion regulation can effectively improve intolerance of uncertainty and emotional outcomes. Chapter 5 integrates findings across studies, discussing their theoretical and clinical implications, strengths, limitations, and suggestions for future research directions. This thesis is the first to systematically investigate how specific emotion regulation strategies relate to intolerance of uncertainty and emotional difficulties. By targeting emotion regulation as a mechanism, it provides a promising foundation for improving intolerance of uncertainty interventions and highlights the potential of tailored, accessible approaches to reduce the emotional burden associated with intolerance of uncertainty.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Health and wellbeing in Ethiopian older adults: Evaluating the WHO Healthy Ageing Framework with local and global implications.
    (2025) Dagnew, Amare
    The WHO Healthy Ageing Framework defines healthy ageing as maintaining wellbeing and functional capacity despite age-related declines. This thesis explored healthy ageing in Ethiopia and other Low and Lower-Middle Income Countries (LLMIC). The research addressed critical knowledge gaps as existing literature has focused primarily on Western and developed nations. The study was particularly focused on Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous nation, given its projected significant population ageing over the next three decades. Moving beyond deficit-based models of health, this research adopted the WHO's Healthy Ageing Framework and emphasised a holistic approach to ageing by prioritizing wellbeing and functionality over the absence of disease. Two main objectives were pursued. First, the thesis identified healthy ageing prevalence, its contributing factors, and their impact on health service utilization. Second, the thesis evaluated whether meeting all five WHO framework criteria is necessary to be classified as a healthy ager. The thesis included a systematic review/meta-analysis of healthy ageing in LLMIC and a cross-sectional survey of 845 randomly selected community-living older adults living in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. For the survey, data collection involved a structured interviewer-administered questionnaire, and physical and functional measurements. Analyses used descriptive and inferential statistics including Poisson regression, linear mixed modelling, and latent class analysis. The systematic review found healthy ageing prevalence rates varied widely (24.7% to 56.5%) based on different definitions of healthy ageing applied. Common frameworks included Rowe and Kahn's Successful Ageing Framework and a single global self-rated health; none assessed the WHO Healthy Ageing Framework. Modifiable factors promoting healthy ageing included social connections, physical activity, and education. The community-based survey identified that 36.7% of older adults in Ethiopia were healthy agers, as defined by the WHO criteria. Factors positively associated with healthy ageing included good nutritional status, lack of multimorbidity, and regular physical activity. While healthy agers demonstrated higher flourishing, both groups showed similar patterns in health service utilization, which was influenced by factors like health insurance and living close to health facility (time taken to reach the health facility). The Latent Class Analysis identified three distinct healthy ageing classes. A healthy ageing class (n = 405) comprised individuals who met fully some of the WHO criteria, as well as those who met some components of the healthy ageing criteria but did not fully satisfy all part. Notably, no significant functional differences emerged between this healthy ageing class and healthy agers who satisisfied or met all WHO Healthy Ageng framework, suggesting that meeting all functional criteria may not be essential for healthy ageing outcomes. In conclusion, healthy ageing rates in Ethiopia and other LLMICs lag behind developed nations. This disparity is influenced by a range of modifiable individual and societal factors including socio-economic status and poverty, lifestyle factors (e.g. physical activity), psychosocial factors (e.g. loneliness and perceptions of the ageing process), and inadequate access to healthcare facilities which adversely impacts health service use. Therefore, comprehensive interventions are necessary such as policies promoting workforce participation to address socio-economic factors, enhanced primary healthcare services to address the healthy needs of older adults, and broader social change to address negative stereotypes of ageing. While focused on Ethiopia, these findings may provide valuable insights for other LLMICs in devising culturally appropriate strategies and healthcare policies to address the challenges of ageing populations.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Deservingness in Indonesia's Social Assistance Policy: Social Protection for All?
    (2025) Budianto, Vania
    As reflected in the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals, social protection is widely recognised as a critical component of development strategies. While developing countries have rapidly introduced social assistance programs to alleviate poverty since the 2000s, a significant portion of the population in the Global South remains excluded. The 60% surge in social assistance programs in response to COVID-19 sparked optimism among international development stakeholders that countries in the Global South would bolster their commitment to expanding social protection. Nevertheless, recent trends indicate that this expansion was temporary, and vulnerable groups continue to face exclusion from these programs. While existing research has evaluated social assistance programs and examined the influence of international organisations and domestic politics in their institutionalisation, few studies have investigated the concept of deservingness, which is critical to a country's political commitment to vulnerable groups (Leisering, 2018). This study adopts the notion of deservingness as a concept operating within a broad social context that gives meaning and determines consequences (Watkins-Hayes & Kovalsky, 2017). This thesis examines how deservingness influences patterns of inclusion and exclusion in social assistance programs for children, women, and the elderly in Indonesia. Using Indonesia as a case study and applying the anthropology of policy approach, this research examines the underlying ideas in Indonesia's social assistance programs and how they reflect the construction of deservingness among these groups. It investigates how different policy actors influence the construction of target groups in social assistance programs. It explores the dynamics affecting national and sub-national policymakers in formulating programs and framing notions of deservingness. This study contributes to the literature by leveraging Indonesia's decentralised polity, where different levels of the government advance various schemes that reflect diverse notions of deservingness towards vulnerable groups. Through interviews, participant observation, and document analysis conducted virtually and in person during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study unpacks how socio-cultural values and hegemonic policy narratives influence state actors and shape policymaking in social assistance across different jurisdictions. The overall argument of this thesis is that the construct of deservingness is not static but contested and dynamic. This research reveals how the interplay of socio-cultural values, externally driven policy paradigms, and state officials' bureaucratic, political and practical interests co-produce the conceptualisation of the "deserving poor" in different ways across various jurisdictions. This thesis advances the following arguments: First, the dominant ideas of deservingness in social assistance emerge from the convergence of religious, gender and family norms with the hegemonic influence of the social investment paradigm, reinforcing a productivist framing of social assistance and forestalling a rights-based approach to social protection. Second, a dominant coalition of "liberal economic technocrats" within the national government bureaucracy shapes Indonesia's predominant poverty discourse, promoting a residual approach to social assistance that excludes specific vulnerable groups. Last, local-level socio-political dynamics lead to a complex and fluid concept of deservingness, often differing from national-level priorities, with local policy entrepreneurs playing a crucial role in aligning political goals with bureaucratic and practical interests. These three dimensions - societal norms, national technocratic approaches, and local political dynamics - interact and work in tension with each other, creating varying patterns of inclusion and exclusion in social assistance across different governance levels.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Measuring the Gas-phase Metallicity of AGN-host galaxies with Bayesian Methods
    (2025) Li, Songlin
    Chemical abundances in the interstellar medium record the history of galaxy assembly, and thus investigating abundances in galaxies hosting active galactic nuclei (AGN) is crucial for understanding the role of AGN regulation in the evolution of their host galaxies. In this thesis, we use Bayesian methods to measure gas-phase metallicity in both local AGN and non-AGN hosts with a consistent method that makes it possible to compare both their mean metallicities and their metallicity fluctuation fields. We find that at fixed stellar mass, AGN-host galaxies generally have higher metallicity and smaller metallicity correlation length than non-AGN galaxies. These differences are primarily because AGN hosts have systematically lower star formation rates (SFR) at fixed stellar mass. Our results show that in the local universe, AGN only indirectly influence both the overall mean metallicity and the metallicity fluctuation fields by suppressing star formation activity, and are consistent with a simple model whereby the main effect of an AGN is to reduce accretion of fresh gas onto galaxies, thereby both suppressing the SFR and inhibiting the dilution of metal concentrations by accreting metal-poor gas. In addition, we find that while both SFR and stellar mass are positively correlated with metallicity correlation length, the former is more fundamental, implying that fluctuations in the metallicity distribution within galaxies are driven more by short-term responses to physical processes such as star formation that can change much faster than a Hubble time. We prepare for future observations of AGN hosts at intermediate redshift (z ~ 1-3), where AGN activity is more prevalent and stronger, by evaluating a range of strategies to derive metallicites from the data that will come from the next generation of integral field spectroscopy instruments. The strategies we use to measure metallicity in AGN hosts in the Local Universe will be challenging to apply to these data because they require access to emission lines over a wide wavelength range that will be expensive or impossible to obtain. We show that there are reduced line suites accessible over a narrower wavelength range that will make reasonably good metallicity measurements possible on these instrument over certain intermediate redshift windows. Finally, we propose future works, including improving our Bayesian methods for deriving metalilcities by incorporating additional sources of ionizing radiation, investigating spatially resolved scaling relations, situating our results for the relationship between SFR, metallicity, and AGN activity in the context of galaxy evolution models, and designing strategies for making metallicity fluctuation maps for future IFS observations.
  • ItemOpen Access
    No Harm Done? The Experiences of Women Who Use Drugs In Indonesia
    (2025) Gaddes, Sheilagh
    During the last decade there has been an increase in the number of Indonesian women who identify with using drugs. Women who use drugs are more vulnerable to the range of harms associated with drug use compared with their male counterparts. Despite more than a decade of harm reduction strategies in Indonesia the prevalence of blood-borne viruses (BBV) among people who inject drugs (PWID) are increasing. An estimated one third of people who use drugs in Indonesia are living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The prevalence of the Hepatitis C virus among people who use drugs in Indonesia is 77 per cent. Also significant is the increase in the incarceration rates of women who use drugs in Indonesia. The increase in the incarceration rates of women charged with drug violations is occurring in the context of Indonesia's 'Drugs Emergency', and the Indonesian Government's commitment to the rehabilitation of the korban narkoba (victims of drugs) by directing people charged with drug use offenses to drug rehabilitation services. In this thesis I explore the experiences of women who use drugs using ethnographic research amongst urban women in two settings in Indonesia across a range of domains of their lives: in the community, in drug rehabilitation services and in prisons. Working with informants who are or have been drug users, some of whom are also peer workers in the harm reduction sector, I demonstrate that women who use drugs are subject to marginalisation and discrimination which poses very real risks to their lives. In many sectors of their lives, Indonesian women who use drugs can access less care and services, and suffer significant directed violence, compared to men who use drugs. Set against the backdrop of Indonesia's 'Drugs Emergency', drawing on policy research as well street-based ethnography, this research provides political and social context to explore the intensification of gendered and class-based forms of structural violence as experienced by women who use drugs in Indonesia.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Automated Modeling Support for Automated Planning
    (2025) Lin, Songtuan
    Automated planning is concerned with the task of finding a sequence of actions to achieve a certain goal. Theoretical investigations have shown that many practical scenarios, e.g., logistics, factories, and Mars rovers, can be modeled using planning frameworks. In spite of that, Automated Planning is not widely deployed in practice, especially outside academia. One major reason for this is the complexity of modeling a practical problem as a planning problem, which necessitates techniques for automated modeling support. In this talk, I would like to address two critical problems in this direction, namely, how to check whether a planning model is constructed correctly and how to repair a flawed planning model. Our approaches for solving these two problems are originated from the common debugging paradigm in programming, i.e., by providing test cases. In our context, a test case is an action sequence that must be a solution (i.e., is feasible and can achieve the goal) if the planning model is flawless. More concretely, we could validate a planning model by checking whether all test cases we provide pass, i.e., whether all provided action sequences are indeed solutions. If some test cases fail, then we know that there are some issues in the planning model, and we call these failed test cases counter-example action sequences (because they are supposed to be solutions but are actually not due to the errors in the model). The repairs can then be made to the planning model which turn all counter-example action sequences into solutions. In my dissertation, I will discuss the computational complexity of verifying whether an action sequence is a solution to a planning problem (i.e., the plan verification problem) and of correcting a planning model by turning counter-example action sequences into solutions. On top of that, I will also introduce some practical approaches we developed for solving those two problems. Lastly, some alternative frameworks for modeling support will also be discussed.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Modern Applied Epidemiology: Neglected Tropical Diseases, Disease Surveillance, Hospital Acquired Infections and Health Product Regulation
    (2025) Ravindran, Bhavi
    This thesis details the requirements for completing the Master of Philosophy in Applied Epidemiology (MAE) at the Australian National University. My primary placement was at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. I undertook four projects addressing each of the major MAE competencies. The first was a data analysis piece examining the epidemiology of Buruli Ulcer (BU) in Victoria and an examination of BU laboratory testing patterns. The second project contributed to the development and early review of surveillance for acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease in Victoria, including scoping a register. The third project was an epidemiology study that explored the utility of existing datasets to describe hospital onset bacteraemia at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. The final project explored regulatory actions undertaken by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in response to an outbreak of Ralstonia pickettii in a contaminated medical product. Alongside each project is a description of my role, lessons learnt and public health implications. Minor MAE competencies have been discussed throughout the thesis.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Between Eagle and Dragon: Analyzing Indonesia’s Hedging Behavior under Joko Widodo Administration (2014-2024)
    (2025) Basundoro, Alfin Febrian
    This thesis investigates Indonesia's strategic behavior under President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) amid intensifying U.S.–China competition, using Kuik Cheng-Chwee’s hedging framework and Oriana Skylar Mastro’s alignment measurement. It argues that Indonesia’s foreign policy during Jokowi’s administration (2014-2024) exemplifies a hedging strategy, indicated by strong defense cooperation with the United States and robust economic engagement with China. Through qualitative analysis of key defense and economic policies between 2014 and 2024, this study demonstrates that Indonesia consistently maintains hedging with no significant change in pattern throughout both Jokowi’s terms. Despite increased Indonesia-China economic cooperation and closer maritime and defense ties with the U.S., Indonesia refrains from making binding commitments such as an alliance treaty or falling into major powers’ sphere of influence that would compromise its autonomy. It concludes that Jokowi’s Indonesia has institutionalized hedging as a pragmatic and adaptive foreign policy response, reflecting both the opportunities and constraints of maintaining strategic autonomy in an era of great power rivalry. Ultimately, this research contributes to the empirical findings of Indonesia’s contemporary foreign policy research and highlights Indonesia’s agency in navigating major power competition.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Cellular and molecular characterisation of regeneration in calcareous sponges and soft corals
    (2025) Caglar, Cuneyt
    Regeneration, the ability to replace damaged or lost body parts, is widespread but highly variable across animals, indicating a complex evolutionary history. Studying animals representing early-branching lineages offers unique insights into the fundamental mechanisms and the evolutionary trajectory of this fascinating trait. This thesis investigates the regenerative capacities of soft corals from the genus Xenia and calcareous sponges from the genus Sycon. Cnidarians, which include corals, sea anemone, and jellyfish, are renowned for their remarkable regenerative abilities. Occupying a key phylogenetic position as the sister group to Bilateria, cnidarians offer crucial insights into the evolution of animals. This phylum, encompasses a diverse range of species, generally characterised by overt radial symmetry and a morphologically simple, diploblastic body plan. The soft coral Xenia (Octocorallia) is a prevalent and resilient genus in the shallow waters of Indo-Pacific coral reefs. Xenia possesses a fleshy body embedded with small, platelet-shaped calcium carbonate sclerites providing structural support and protection. The sclerites are produced by calcium secreting cells called scleroblasts. Sponges, representing one of the earliest branching animal lineages, are known for their morphologically simple yet highly efficient body plans, consisting mainly of two layers of epithelial cells. They are capable of whole-body regeneration and reaggregation from dissociated cells, making them ideal models for studying fundamental regenerative processes. The significance of calcareous sponges lies in their phylogenetic position among the oldest extant animal lineages, their directional apical-to-basal axis morphology, and their extensive gene repertoire. Notably, this is the only sponge class to have calcitic skeletal elements, produced by specialised cell types called sclerocytes. Here, I describe the regeneration process in Xenia from small body fragments and identify differential expression of developmental and putative biomineralisation genes. By integrating these findings with available single-cell RNA-Seq data from Xenia and a stony coral species, I have uncovered the transcriptome of Xenia's previously bioinformatically undetected scleroblasts. This discovery sheds light on the evolutionary origin of scleroblasts from secretory cells and reveals an ancestral biomineralisation cassette. Furthermore, I present evidence suggesting that biomineralisation in both soft and stony corals and calcareous sponges evolved independently. In the proposed evolutionary scenario, each lineage inherited an ancestral organic scaffold and subsequently co-opted a biomineralisation toolkit, enabling the deposition of minerals onto the existing organic scaffold. Skeletogenesis in soft corals and calcareous sponges was acquired by mesohyl/mesoglea cells which form small calcitic elements, whereas in stony corals, it occurred within the aboral ectoderm, forming massive aragonitic skeletons. The analysis of the molecular and cellular mechanisms employed by Xenia and Sycon in response to injury and during wound healing revealed the involvement of an ancient animal wound healing pathway, marked by the activation of the immediate early response genes Jun and Fos. This suggests the presence of a conserved animal injury response pathway, which probably originated in the ancestors of all animals. Insights gained in this thesis offer a window into the evolutionary pathways that have shaped the development, regeneration, and biomineralisation processes in animals.
  • ItemOpen Access
    The Constructing of Field Epidemiologists in the Periphery of Communities of Practice: A Qualitative Investigation into Learning in Field Epidemiology Training Programs
    (2025) Griffith, Matthew
    Field epidemiology addresses urgent health problems to quickly inform prevention and control interventions. Field epidemiologists use epidemiological tools to conduct surveillance and investigate outbreaks of disease to provide decision-makers with information to control and prevent diseases. For 75 years, field epidemiology training programs (FETPs) have been the primary training mechanism, with 100 programs operating globally today. Typically, FETPs feature a month-long course and one to two years of service-based, hands-on learning to build competence in public health surveillance and outbreak detection and investigation. Though studies often evaluate FETP outputs and outcomes, research into learning processes is limited. This thesis addresses that gap, exploring how learning occurs within FETPs through three questions: 1) What were the learning approaches in the foundational FETP? 2) What are the learning approaches in contemporary FETPs? 3) Where do principles and practices misalign in FETPs? To address the first question, a case study of the foundational FETP (the US Epidemic Intelligence Service) used inductive content analysis of published documents. It showed alignment with Knowles's andragogical principles, Kolb's experiential learning cycle, and Lave's and Wenger's legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice, revealing a constructivist, humanist, and situated learning approach. For the second question, I co-designed a qualitative study with four contemporary FETPs: Australia, Japan, Mongolia, Taiwan. Data collection included participant observation and 47 in-depth interviews with six advisors and 19 trainees. Analysis followed Charmaz's grounded theory and Polkinghorne's narrative inquiry, synthesizing narratives into program-specific case stories and reviewing these for verisimilitude with each program's coresearcher. Cross-program comparisons revealed a common learning process in which trainees engaged the data, knowledge, people, and systems of public health contexts to revise or reinforce knowledge. Enabling factors included learning environments, trainee tenacity, and advisor stewardship. Routine work placements were the most robust learning environment, while courses contributed the least. Further analysis of advisor stewardship yielded three components: assigning trainee roles and responsibilities, "laying the groundwork" for trainee activities, and adaptive engagement. Modes of engagement comprised a six-scale spectrum ranging from hands-off to hands-on. Advisors aimed for gradual shifts toward hands-off modes, but they adapted to the culture, trainee characteristics and learning needs, task urgency and complexity, and advisor-to trainee ratios. These findings revealed misalignments between the global focus on curriculum design and the reality of learning through practice, as well as between advisors' desired and actual modes of engagement. This thesis provides contemporary evidence of FETP learning processes across diverse contexts, offering insights to inform evaluation and improve practice. It expands Lave and Wenger's legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practise by illustrating how FETP advisors balance legitimacy and peripherality to construct trainee competence while minimising public health risks. By illuminating the learning process in FETPs, this thesis addresses a critical gap in the literature, points to implementation pathways for building field epidemiology capacity, and advances the application of communities of practice theory in contemporary, globally relevant contexts. Its findings emphasize the importance of learning in context, learning environments, advisor stewardship, and trainee tenacity. It introduces a spectrum of adaptive modes of advisor engagement with trainees. Lastly, it presents concrete recommendations to enhance trainee learning based on the findings and identifies further directions for research to inform FETP practice and policy.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Building new venture legitimacy for resource mobilisation
    (2025) Yu, Lumeng
    The process of early-stage new ventures building legitimacy for resource mobilisation is explored in this research. Early-stage new ventures face high levels of uncertainty, resource constraints, and the liability of newness and smallness. Consequently, it is challenging for resource holders, such as potential investors and customers, to mobilise resources to a new venture and for new ventures to mobilise resources from resource holders. New ventures need to build legitimacy and cross legitimacy thresholds to mobilise resources from resource holders. A legitimacy threshold is a critical decision point where, as a result of their interaction with the new venture, resource holders take action to mobilise their resources for a new venture. After crossing a legitimacy threshold, a new venture can achieve further gains in legitimacy and resources. Existing literature has yet to adequately explain the process through which early-stage ventures build legitimacy thereby mobilising resources. This research aims to understand the process of crossing legitimacy thresholds. The research question is: How do new ventures build legitimacy for crossing legitimacy thresholds thereby mobilising resources? Case studies of two early-stage new ventures are presented to explore how the process of building legitimacy unfolds and the underlying mechanisms that drive that process. The findings shed light on the process of building legitimacy: rather than being 'on' or 'off', legitimacy is co-created through repeated interactions between resource holders and new ventures. Repeated interaction enables resource holders to accumulate knowledge about a new venture and decrease the level of uncertainty and equivocality, thereby enabling legitimacy thresholds to be crossed. We find that potential customers and investors commit their resources in increments, which increase in size as knowledge is accumulated, and relationships are built between the two parties. However, because of differing institutional logics and tolerance of uncertainty, the time taken for customers and investors to build legitimacy with a new venture is different. Potential customers take much longer than potential investors because failure of a new venture is an inherent part of investors' business model, while customers have zero tolerance for failure in their purchasing decisions. In the face of irreducible uncertainty, trust explains why potential customers and investors take action to mobilise resources. Trust consists of knowledge and willingness to suspend uncertainty to enable action. Resource holders momentarily suspend their uncertainty when making decisions to act to mobilise resources and continue their interaction with a new venture. Resource holders transfer resources to a new venture when the level of uncertainty decreases to a level that they are willing to bear. A model of new ventures building legitimacy for crossing legitimacy thresholds is developed that combines the cognition and action of resource holders in mobilising resources. This is a unified model as it applies to both how customers and investors evaluate new venture legitimacy and decide whether a new venture has crossed a legitimacy threshold, thereby mobilising their resources. It is the first model that explains how both customers and investors co-create new venture legitimacy with a new venture.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Evaluating plant-pathogen interactions in classical biological control of weeds: Kordyana brasiliensis released against target weed Tradescantia fluminensis in Australia
    (2025) Zeil-Rolfe, Isabel
    Tradescantia fluminensis is a significant environmental weed in Australia invading deeply shaded forests and riparian ecosystems reducing native vegetation species richness and abundance. Biotrophic leaf pathogen, Kordyana brasiliensis has been introduced into Australia and New Zealand as a biocontrol agent for T. fluminensis. Post-release surveys from initial releases have reported successful establishment and variable impacts on T. fluminensis populations, however, impacts on the weed's populations and invaded vegetation communities across broader contexts and temporal gradients remains to be evaluated. This thesis sought to explore aspects of the ecology of K. brasiliensis and T. fluminensis and evaluate short-term outcomes of the biocontrol program in eastern Australia. Chapter 1 examines how different local habitat and regional contexts influence the abundance-impact associations of T. fluminensis in native forests across eastern Australia. We modelled the association of T. fluminensis invasion with native species foliage cover and richness across two different habitat types (remnant vs replanted forests), two vegetation community types (wet sclerophyll vs river oak forests), and two regions (northern vs southern New South Wales). The variation in native species responses amongst different functional growth forms was also modelled. Impacts of T. fluminensis invasion on native species communities was most strongly explained by local site variables. This study highlights the need for site-level weed management plans to consider local community and habitat contexts and functional representation of resident species. Chapter 2 details a series of experiments with K. brasiliensis in controlled environments to investigate whether conidia can cause leaf lesions on T. fluminensis and the effects of temperature and wetness period on basidiospore germination processes (germ-tube formation and elongation, formation of conidia). Inoculations with conidia demonstrated that conidia can cause leaf lesions on T. fluminensis. Basidiospore germination and germ-tube elongation were significantly influenced by the interaction of both temperature and wetness period duration whereas conidia formation was strongly influenced by both factors separately. Chapter 3 details a short-term field experiment where K. brasiliensis was released at sites invaded by T. fluminensis in eastern Australia. Sites were monitored over 30-months to evaluate agent population dynamics, impacts of the agent on T. fluminensis populations, and the subsequent response of invaded vegetation communities. Kordyana brasiliensis rapidly established at all release sites and was strongly influenced by macroclimate variables. On average, T. fluminensis abundance declined significantly after 18-months and was strongly associated with increasing K. brasiliensis disease severity. Declines in T. fluminensis abundance was associated with increases in native species richness. This study demonstrates that K. brasiliensis is a highly damaging agent, however, further long-term monitoring is required to evaluate whether additional management and restoration activities are required. Chapter 4 examines the identity of white leaf lesions collected on two native Australian Commelinaceae hosts during pre- and post-release surveys of K. brasiliensis. The specimens identities were studied using multigene phylogenetic analyses to determine whether K. brasiliensis had extended its known host range, or whether they represented other Kordyana species. Three new species of Kordyana were described based on the phylogenetic analysis, morphology, and host species.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Long Term Laser Frequency Readout for Space Based Interferometry
    (2025) Rees, Emily Rose
    Future space based laser ranging interferometric missions such as the GRACE Continuity (GRACE-C) mission are expected to require absolute laser frequency knowledge. The GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission, launched in 2018, included a Laser Ranging Instrument (LRI) as a technology demonstrator. The success of the LRI has led to its selection as the primary instrument for the next mission (GRACE-C), and it will likely also be the primary instrument for other similar future missions. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) missions perform key environmental and climate measurements, particularly monitoring the movement of water around the Earth. The data generated by the GRACE and GRACE-FO missions contribute to approximately one quarter of the fifty-five 'Essential Climate Variables' tracked as part of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). The use of a LRI as the primary instrument for future missions requires the development of a new technique to provide absolute laser frequency knowledge, which will allow the science data to be compared over longer timescales of months and years. This thesis presents a proposed technique to achieve this using a dual frequency modulation, and details the experimental demonstration of the technique as well as the risk mitigation activities undertaken. In 2022, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Mission Concept Review recommended this technique for inclusion on the GRACE-C mission, and it now forms part of the mission baseline. The proposed technique adds additional modulation tones to the existing laser stabilisation scheme, which relies on Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) locking. The additional tones are used to phase modulate the laser light, and can be readout using a similar approach to the PDH technique. By measuring changes to the optical cavity Free Spectral Range (FSR), the readout is sensitive to changes in the optical cavity length, which can be related back to the absolute laser frequency through the relationship dL/L = dv(Laser)/v(Laser) = dv(FSR)/v(FSR). This thesis describes the testing and development of such a dual frequency modulation technique suitable for use on GRACE-C. A proof-of-concept experiment demonstrated the viability of this technique, achieving performance exceeding the expected requirement. A prototype unit was subsequently designed and built in collaboration with CEA Technologies, and has been tested in a flight-like testbed at the ANU and also in the flight-hardware testbed at NASA JPL. This testing identified a number of limitations of the technique, including highlighting the impact of spurious backreflections. The design requirements, interfaces and testing requirements for the prototype unit are all described in detail, along with performance tests undertaken to demonstrate the prototype could achieve performance requirements under expected mission conditions. A high fidelity simulation was developed to model the expected behaviour of the system and has been compared against measured performance, highlighting parameters that must be tightly controlled and where requirements may be relaxed. Finally, an analysis of the limitations of the technique are presented, including a discussion of noise sources and how they compare with typical PDH systems, an assessment of the contributions of spurious backreflections, as well as experimental demonstrations of risk mitigation activities.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Knowledge Graphs and Natural Language: two sides of the same coin
    (2025) Papaluca, Andrea
    In recent years, the fields of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Knowledge Graphs (KG) have witnessed remarkable advancements, each independently contributing to the enhancement of various AI applications. Knowledge Graphs, structured representations of knowledge, offer a powerful framework for organizing and connecting information, facilitating efficient knowledge retrieval and reasoning. On the other hand, NLP techniques enable machines to understand, generate, and communicate in human language, bridging the gap between human and machine communication. The symbiotic relationship between Knowledge Graphs and Natural Language Processing and Understanding (NLP/NLU) is increasingly recognised as pivotal for advancing AI capabilities. In my thesis in computer science, I delve into the interplay between these two domains, exploring how they complement each other to achieve deeper semantic understanding and more sophisticated reasoning, by proposing and evaluating machine learning methods that integrate them seamlessly. More specifically, the aim is to guide the reader through the boundary connecting NLP to KGs, presenting which routes could be followed to achieve different levels of integration between the two modalities and which degree of improvement has to be expected under each different scenario. The core of the thesis is constituted by three peer-reviewed papers (of which, two were best-paper awarded) that explore different aspects of the integration between Knowledge Graphs and Natural Language. Ranging from the more simple combination of graph and text embeddings through concatenation, to the deeper construction of a multi-modal aligned text-graph space and to the more high level usage of external KGs as reservoirs of commonsense knowledge, the thesis demonstrated how the integration of the two data modalities, and their corresponding encoder models, often enabled better modeling capabilities. This hybrid integration was beneficial in both language related tasks, such as Relation/Triplet Extraction (RE/TE) and Question Answering (QA), and graph associated tasks, such as Link Prediction (LP). Various standard datasets commonly used in literature were adapted and enriched to allow for the joint processing of graph and text information, serving as benchmarks for quantitatively evaluating the improvement over the baseline. The set of tested models included Transformer-based architectures, ranging from their first iterations (e.g., Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) and Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT)), to the more recent Large Language Models (LLM) (e.g., LLM Meta AI (LLaMA) and Falcon). On the graph side, instead, TransE embeddings as well as declinations of the Graph Convolutional Networks (GCN), like Relational GCN (RGCN) and Compositional GCN (CompGCN), were considered. Each one of these studies presented a different approach to achieve the integration and tested for different facets of reasoning and understanding natural language. However, they all demonstrated how pivotal the interaction of standard NLP models with KGs is for processing natural language. In particular, they evidenced as sometimes (specifically in the LLM case) the integration of an external KG both, leads to larger improvements and constitutes a cheaper approach, compared to, for instance, training and making use of larger, more complex language models. Therefore, the thesis offers a guideline for future research into how the integration of data modalities (and their corresponding encoder models) can enable better modeling capabilities in analysis tasks from answering questions to creating knowledge graphs.
  • ItemOpen Access
    "We are Living in a World not Meant for Us": A Study About Why Girls Are Not Allowed to be Autistic
    (2025) French, Susannah
    In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of evidence that women have been under or misdiagnosed for autism. Some authors would say that this is due to women and girls being more adept at camouflaging their autistic traits (Attwood, 2013; Gould & Ashton-Smith, 2011; Lai, 2017). However, the findings in this thesis reveal that the missed diagnoses go further than this: girls are not allowed to be autistic. That is not to say girls are not autistic or not allowed to be diagnosed with autism, but that girls are not allowed to just be their autistic selves. Women - whether they have been diagnosed or not - try to strategically adapt to a world that is not meant for them while also balancing gendered expectations. Despite one's neurotype, there is an expectation for women and girls to be socially adept, intuitively empathetic, accommodating and nurturing (Eckerd, 2020): traits not typically associated with autism (Baron-Cohen, 2005). This thesis also explores why women often settle for self-diagnosis, what happens when neurotypical and gendered expectations clash, and the specific experiences that come with living with an undiagnosed condition. The aim of this thesis is to explore a small but impactful part of the female experience of autism through three core concepts of conformity, concealment and anticipated stigma. Complimenting these core concepts are the operational notions of biographical illumination, strategic outness, the double empathy problem, and camouflaging/masking. This thesis explores seven case studies about autistic women speaking on their experiences. Throughout each chapter, this thesis analyses the micro-relational interactions and the specific tools they have implemented to live well in a world that is not meant for them. The case studies detail the intricacies of the three core concepts in this thesis in different forms. As a work of sociological inquiry, this thesis's conceptual framework is drawn from Goffman's (1956) dramaturgy, critical autism studies (Davidson & Orsini, 2013; Milton, 2012), queer studies (Orne, 2011; 2013; Pfeffer, 2014) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991; Collins, 2000) . Ultimately, this thesis poses a sustained reconsideration of the female experience of autism along sociological and clinical lines. Ultimately, this thesis contributes a problematisation of the construction of the autism label, the diagnostic process and why girls are not allowed to be autistic.
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The Australian National University acknowledges, celebrates and pays our respects to the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people of the Canberra region and to all First Nations Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and work, and whose cultures are among the oldest continuing cultures in human history.


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