UQ PhD graduates highly prized
Three recent PhD awards were another example of the high quality and standard set by theses completed at the University of Queensland, according to the Deputy Director of the UQ Graduate School and Dean of Postgraduate Studies Associate Professor Alan Lawson.
Dr Lawson said University postgraduates were not only many but highly prized. On his appointment in early 1998, Dr Lawson said the Graduate School's goal would be to have UQ PhDs recognised as the best quality PhDs in the country.
The recent prize-winners included:
o Dr Susan Danby (Graduate School of Education) (telephone 07 3864 3159) who received both the Australian Early Childhood Association Doctoral Thesis Award for 1999 and the Australian Association for Research in Education prize for her PhD on interaction and social order in the pre-school classroom.
Dr Danby said her study brought a new perspective to early childhood education. Using work from the area of childhood studies, also known as the sociology of childhood, it examined the play practices of young children aged three and four years in an Australian inner city childcare centre.
"The children's play was video-recorded and analysed in fine detail to show the amazing accomplishments of the young children as they competently used talk and action to build and shape their social worlds of gender and power," Dr Danby said.
"Instead of seeing these children as developing towards maturity, the study celebrated the complex, richly textured and competent work that young children do in building their social worlds. It showed how children negotiated their hurts and joys, their alliances, and dilemmas in their everyday play worlds. This is the work of childhood."
o Dr Michael Barr (History Department) (telephone 07 3378 7163) who won the 1999 Asian Studies Association of Australia President's Prize of $1000, an award certificate and priority consideration for publication of his thesis in the Association's Southeast Asia Publication Series. Nominated for the award by the University, Dr Barr's thesis concerned the beliefs behind the man credited with Singapore's economic miracle, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
Dr Barr says Mr Lee was a leading and sometimes controversial figure in the current revival of Confucianism throughout the Chinese world and an architect of the contemporary "Asian Values" campaign. This campaign maintains that democracy and human rights are culturally anathema to Asians who are more interested in strong families, strong government and economic prosperity.
According to Dr Barr, the keys to understanding Mr Lee are found in both his English education and Confucian/Chinese upbringing. He links Mr Lee's faith in progress to defining elements of his political views including notions of elitism.
Dr Barr's thesis was described as original and adding new dimensions to knowledge of progressivism in Lee Kwan Yew's thinking in a very fresh way by one examiner and as an "original and important contribution to Southeast Asian historical studies" by another.
o Dr Les Miranda (Centre for Drug Design and Development) (email Les@crc.dk) who won the 1999 Cornforth Medal awarded by the Royal Australian Chemical Institute for the outstanding PhD thesis from an Australian university across the whole field of chemistry. Dr Miranda's thesis concerned peptide and protein chemical synthesis. His discoveries will have applications in medicinal chemistry. Dr Miranda conducted highly innovative, original and independent research encompassing a range of disciplines including peptide and protein chemical synthesis, organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, cloning and expression of cytokines and inflammatory pathology. The research in his thesis has been published in the Journal of the American Chemistry Society and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA. Eagerly sought as a postdoctoral fellow with offers from Scripps and the Rockefeller Universities, he is currently designing and synthesising water-compatible resins for enzyme-directed chemistry at the Carlsberg Research Institute in Denmark.
For more information, contact the Graduate School (telephone 07 3365 3477).
