About our Research Projects
Below you can read about recent major projects that have received competitive national support from funding bodies such as the Australian Research Council.
These projects investigate the role that reading and digital practices around reading play in young people’s everyday lives, Australian teens reading habits and preferences, and the social conditions that make possible teens’ discovery of, and access to, ‘good reads’.
Projects
Discovering a ‘Good Read’: Cultural Pathways to Reading for Australian Teens in a Digital Age
Australian Research Council Linkage Projects Grant (2020-2023 LP180100258).
This project aims to support the school, library, and book industries to increase teenagers’ recreational reading. Our partners are: The Australian Publishers Association, BookPeople, the Australian Libraries and Information Association, the School Library Association of Victoria and the Copyright Agency Ltd.
The research maps a broad digital and cultural economy of reading, investigating how teens discover books, and the cultural and material factors that influence their choices. It also studies the role of different cultural intermediaries, ranging from professionals such as librarians, publishers and booksellers, to new digital intermediaries and networks in the digital ecology.
School Surveys 2022/23
Part of the Discovering a ‘Good Read’ project included a survey with students in secondary schools in WA, QLD, NSW and VIC. The survey investigated reading behaviour and preferences to gather information about how Australian teens find and choose books they want to read.
Teen Reading in the Digital Era: Platforms, Access and Diversity
Copyright Agency Cultural Fund and Deakin University Central Research Grant (2016-17).
Drawing on interviews and a survey of diverse cohorts of secondary school students in Victoria and Western Australia, the project investigated the extent to which digital texts, eBooks and the new smart devices used to access them were a major mode in Australian teenagers’ reading. It also examined how teens’ geographical locations as well as their diverse sociocultural backgrounds impacted on their access to, and participation in, leisure reading. Of particular interest was the extent to which family, school and public libraries played a role in Australian adolescents’ knowledge about, access to, and engagement with, leisure reading material in digital and print formats.