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It was an odd time and place to learn a federal minister had stripped her of $436,000 in funding.
Professor Philippa Collin had just nipped into the National Portrait Gallery to buy last-minute gifts from the gallery shop. It was Christmas Eve, 2021.
The Australian Research Council’s funding model was rehauled last week.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis
She returned to her car outside Old Parliament House and checked her phone.
“That’s when we realised that the news of the veto had been dropped on Twitter,” Collin says. “That gave me pause to reflect on the quality of our democracy.”
Collin, a social researcher from Western Sydney University, had applied for funding from the Australian Research Council for a research project on the unprecedented School Strike for Climate protests.
Her application passed through the painstaking peer-review process undertaken by ARC’s selection committee and was approved for $436,069. More than 3000 applications were made that year and about 600 green-lit.
Professor Philippa Collin is researching the unprecedented wave of student activism over climate change.Credit: Paul Jeffers
But there was a final hurdle: sign-off from then-education minister Stuart Robert. He vetoed Collin’s funding along with five other peer-approved projects. “We were shocked and disappointed to say the least,” she says now.
A Christmas scandal sent scientists to war. Last week, they won
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26.03.2024
Examine, a free weekly newsletter covering science with a sceptical, evidence-based eye, is sent every Tuesday. You’re reading an excerpt – Sign up to get the whole newsletter in your inbox.
It was an odd time and place to learn a federal minister had stripped her of $436,000 in funding.
Professor Philippa Collin had just nipped into the National Portrait........
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