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Research

Clinic_Photos16-09-09-056Welcome to the Research and Development Website of the Faculty of Human Sciences. Research in the Faculty of Human Sciences spans a wide range of disciplines including Psychology, Early Childhood, Education, Linguistics, Cognitive Science and Medicine.  There are opportunities for research collaboration and higher degree research in all of these areas with contributions from world class researchers in the field.

The Faculty of Human Sciences at Macquarie University is home to the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD). Through CCD, a group of leading researchers, including academics from Macquarie University, the University of New South Wales and the University of Western Australia, is conducting research to further understand, and develop unique treatments for a range of disorders such as dementia, autism and reading problems. CCD is closely associated with the world-renowned Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS). MACCS researchers are leaders in their field and explore topics related to psycholinguistics, visual cognition, and cognitive neuropsychiatry. CCD is also developing collaborations with researchers from the Centre for Language Sciences (CLaS), another Macquarie University Research Centre located within the Faculty, in areas such as psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, lexicography, audiology and speech science.

The Faculty of Human Sciences is home to the new Hearing Hub a state-of-the-art facility that will bring together researchers from several University research teams, including Languages and Cognitive Sciences, and clinical research/professional training teams, from audiology, speech pathology, and psychology. However, through a unique partnership, the Hearing Hub will work together with major government research organisations such as the National Acoustic Laboratories within Australian Hearing, research and implantation teams from Australia's leading hearing technology company, Cochlear Ltd, and major not-for-profit organisations offering clinical and related social services for hearing disorders, including The Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children and The Shepherd Centre.

in_med_researchIn medical research, the Faculty of Human Sciences has developed a concentration of Research Excellence (CoRE) in Neuroscience, Vascular Science and Surgery. Researchers are part of the Australian School of Advanced Medicine and Macquarie University Hospital and Clinic, both of which house state-of-the-art medical research facilities.

Education is another major research focus within the Faculty of Human Sciences. Researchers at the Institute of Early Childhood and its associated Children and Families Research Centre and Mia Mia Child and Family Study Centre, research topics related to early childhood education, while researchers at the Department of Education examine aspects of school and higher education. The Macquarie University Special Education Centre (MUSEC) conducts research into the education of children with special needs in conjunction with the Special Education School  that operates on campus. Finally, the Faculty of Human Sciences accommodates the Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre, a collaborative initiative between Macquarie University and the New South Wales Department of Education that seeks to develop and evaluate technology-based solutions in education.

The Department of Psychology with its associated Centre for Emotional Health is one of the largest and most productive psychology departments in Australia. It is also one of the most diverse, with world-class research in areas ranging from childhood anxiety to driving and motion capture. It is a key contributor to the Faculty in terms of the quality of publications and research grant success.

World-class research in linguistics, particularly in applied linguistics, is generated in the Facultyâs Department of Linguistics and its associated research groups. Researchers in the Department of Linguistics employ a variety of approaches to examine the use of language in social situations, speech and hearing disorders and processes of translation and interpreting. Their research in Australian Sign Language has been especially successful.

You can find out more about research in the Faculty by visiting the websites of the various departments and research centres. The Faculty has a lively and growing research culture and welcomes interested people from within and outside the university to attend its research seminars and public lectures.

Associate Professor Mark Wiggins
Associate Dean, Research


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International Research Collaborations

 

Are you getting sleepy - research involving the use of hypnosis

In her office in the department of cognitive science at Sydney's Macquarie University, Amanda Barnier is showing me a video of one of her recent human experiments. On the screen is one of the associate professor's willing subjects, a young male student who is perfectly normal aside from being highly hypnotisable, a quality only 10 to 15 per cent of the population possess. Seventy to 80 per cent of us are moderately hypnotisable. Read more

 

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