ADM+S researchers secure ARC Discovery Project funding for 2026
Author
Date 28 October 2025
The Australian Research Council (ARC) has announced more than $342 million in funding for 536 new projects under the 2025 ARC Discovery Projects scheme.
Nine of the funded projects include contributions from ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society members, showcasing the Centre’s commitment to advancing impactful, multidisciplinary research.
ARC Acting Chief Executive Officer, Dr Richard Johnson, said the ARC Discovery Projects scheme supports excellent basic and applied research to expand Australia’s knowledge base and research capability.
“Discovery grants support individual researchers and research teams in research projects that provide economic, commercial, environmental, social and/or cultural benefits to the Australian community,” Dr Johnson said.
The nine projects involving ADM+S members reflect research excellence across diverse fields, from Generative AI models to ‘shadow money’ and the use of smartphones and social media to support learning.
Projects involving ADM+S members include the following (ADM+S researchers in bold):
A Cultural History of Workplace Fatigue
Assoc Prof Elizabeth Stephens, Prof Alison Downham Moore, Dr Christopher O’Neill, Prof Melissa Gregg
This project aims to investigate how the historical and cultural construction of workplace fatigue shapes the design and implementation of fatigue management technologies in an age of AI.
Atmospheres of Wellbeing: Awareness and Action Towards Better Air Quality
Professor Deborah Lupton, Dr David Rousell
The planet is currently facing an air quality crisis. This social research project aims to i) identify the heuristics and practices Australians use to perceive, understand and act on air quality; and ii) formulate creative approaches to environmental education for better awareness and action in individual, community and organisational contexts.
Audiences, equity, and the future of free-to-air television
Prof Ramon Lobato, Hon. Professor Jock Given, Professor Catherine Johnson, Dr Alexa Scarlata
Australia’s free-to-air television industry is in structural decline, with concerning implications for media access, emergency communications and social cohesion. This project aims to develop novel methods to identify those Australians most affected, to understand how their experience of television will change, and to provide options to ensure widely-endorsed public policy goals are met in a radically different media landscape.
Contextualised Commonsense Reasoning for Human Behaviour Analysis
Prof Maurice Pagnucco, Assoc Prof Yang Song, Prof Gerhard Lakemeyer
Commonsense reasoning has long been a fundamental challenge in artificial intelligence (AI). One of the major lessons from 70 years of research in AI is that context matters. This project pioneers a contextualised approach to commonsense reasoning; plans and contexts are tailored to specific behaviours and individuals and updated dynamically over time.
Educational affordances of young people’s smartphone and social media use
Prof Neil Selwyn, Dr Clare Southerton, Dr Selena Nemorin
This project aims to investigate how Australian teenagers are using smartphones and social media to support learning. This project expects to generate significant new knowledge about young people’s capacity to engage productively with these technologies in light of growing institutional restrictions and bans.
Ethical, social and regulatory implications of informal sperm donation
Prof Catherine Mills, Assoc Prof Neera Bhatia, Dr Karin Hammarberg, Dr Molly Johnston, Dr Giselle Newton
The project expects to generate new knowledge to address the the informal provision of sperm via the internet, while also improving the formal and regulated system of sperm donation.
Foreign conflicts, domestic divides: Advancing a deliberative response<
Prof Selen Ercan, Prof John Dryzek, Dr Jordan McSwiney, Dr Ehsan Dehghan, Dr Sofya Glazunova, Dr Kurt Sengul
The project will extend the application of deliberative democracy to address de-territorialized conflicts in multicultural societies.
Reduce hallucination in large language models via knowledge-based reasoning
Prof Xiuzhen (Jenny) Zhang, Prof Jeffrey Chan, Dr Estrid (Jiayuan) He, Prof Erik Cambria
This project aims to address the critical challenge of hallucination — a phenomenon where generative AI models produce information that appears plausible but is factually incorrect — with a focus on news fact-checking.
Shadow Money: A Comparative Analysis
Prof Janet Roitman, Prof Ellie Rennie, Assoc Prof Tatiana Dancy, Assoc Prof Fabio Mattioli, Dr Julia Tomassetti, Dr Christina Harris, Prof Kean Birch
This project aims to understand how new forms of “shadow money” – or digital tokens created by non-bank financial actors – are reshaping systems of exchange. The project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of digital economies.
Read the full list of 2026 ARC Discovery Project recipients project descriptions
