Macquarie University ranked top 10 in Australia in the 2024 Times Higher Education World University Rankings

Macquarie University is proud to announce its notable performance in the 2024 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, solidifying its position as one of Australia’s top 10 institutions in higher education. The Rankings assess research-intensive universities across their core missions, encompassing teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

What sets Macquarie apart in these rankings is its performance in the Research Quality, International Outlook and Industry pillars. These achievements underscore our commitment to disseminating new knowledge and groundbreaking ideas on a global scale.

Macquarie has particularly excelled in the three newly introduced indicators: Research Strength, Research Excellence and Research Influence. While Research Strength provides insights into research quality using percentile-based benchmarks, Research Excellence identifies the top 10 per cent of global research. Research Influence, on the other hand, considers the number of citations on a paper as well as the importance of the citing papers, offering a more comprehensive view of research excellence.

The ranking achievement is intrinsically linked to Macquarie’s strategic vision and long-term strategy of supporting research excellence. This approach is most recently exemplified by the establishment of ten new University Research Centres. These Centres build upon existing and emerging strengths across various academic disciplines to deliver excellence, collaboration, innovation and value creation in the service of significant scientific and social challenges. They are a testament to Macquarie’s commitment to addressing global challenges through consilience and pioneering research and innovation, complementing the strong performance in the research-related indicators of the THE rankings.

Find out more about the World University Rankings 2024 methodology.

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Macquarie Business School ranks second for career impact among NSW business schools

Macquarie Business School has ranked in the top five for career impact – second among NSW business schools – in the AFR BOSS Best Business Schools list.

Executive Dean Professor Eric Knight spoke to the Australian Financial Review about the school’s focus on industry engagement and ensuring practical skills and experience in education that meets industry needs. Read more here.

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US fellowship for orthopaedic surgeon

Academic orthopaedic shoulder and elbow surgeon, Associate Professor Sumit Raniga, has won a prestigious award from the Shoulder and Elbow Society of Australia (SESA). Presented every two years, the SESA Travelling Fellowship Award has previously provided recipients with a month of travel to visit leading European orthopaedic centres. Associate Professor Raniga is the first recipient to be offered a choice between visiting Europe and the United States. As part of the fellowship, he will receive a full scholarship to visit the Mayo Clinic, Harvard University and the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, plus two other centres of excellence of his choice. He expects to leave Australia in September 2024. As part of his visit, he will present at the closed meeting of the American Shoulder and Elbow Society in San Antonio, Texas.

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Director of Research Training and Senior Lecturer at Macquarie Law School named finalist in Lawyer’s Weekly Women in Law Awards 2023

Dr Madeline Taylor has been named as a finalist in the Academic/Researcher of the Year category of the Lawyer’s Weekly Women in Law Awards 2023. The Women in Law Awards is the most highly regarded awards program across Australia and is the benchmark for excellence, recognising exceptional women in the Australian legal industry. This prestigious national awards program presents an exceptional opportunity for leading women to showcase their achievements and celebrate the recognition they deserve. Winners will be announced on Thursday 23 November at the Crown Melbourne. Read more here.

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Four fellowships awarded to Faculty of Arts

Congratulations are in order for the Faculty of Arts’ recipients of the 2024 Macquarie University Research Fellowship (MQRF) scheme.

Ms Ceridwen Dovey, from the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language, and Literature (MCCALL), received the fellowship for the innovative project ‘The Art of Planet Hunting: The role of artistry and imagination in visualising exoplanets’, which aims to understand what is at stake when astronomical artists synthesise scientific and creative knowledge to depict exoplanets (planets outside our solar system). This research is urgent because the golden age of exoplanet discovery has only just begun, thanks to next-generation advanced telescopes. While artists’ visualisations of exoplanets make an essential contribution to public understanding of the universe, there is little scholarship on artists as co-creators of astronomical knowledge. This project will develop new conceptual frameworks for analysing exoplanet imagery, grounded in both the aesthetics and ethics of how scientific data about exoplanets is creatively interpreted.

Also becoming a Fellow is Dr Emma Mitchell, School of Social Sciences, for the project ‘Children caring: shadow care infrastructures sustaining low-income families’. Children in low-income families are more likely to take on caring duties due to lack of income and available supports. The hidden care load children carry intensifies as the pandemic, environmental crisis and economic turbulence disrupt already stretched support infrastructures. This project uses a child-focused, creative approach to investigate how children’s care activities help sustain low-income families and impact child and family wellbeing. Expected outcomes include the development of child-centred care theory and a better understanding of the care capacities and care gaps that shape children’s experiences of poverty. Benefits include refining supports for children and families to improve their quality of life and promote positive health and employment outcomes in the long–term.

Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Department of Security Studies and Criminology, also received a MQRF for the project, ‘Reforming Australia’s policy approach to hostage diplomacy and wrongful detention’. This project offers the first comprehensive study of how states respond to the significant international issue of wrongful detention. It aims to analyse the Australian government and partner countries’ existing policies on wrongful detention to identify scope for meaningful domestic policy reform. By examining international best practice, this project will also investigate the broader geopolitical and diplomatic implications of the international growth of hostage diplomacy, and the prospects for tackling this emerging phenomenon through international collaboration. Intended outcomes include multiple peer-reviewed journal articles, a DECRA application, influencing policymaking and improving outcomes for victims and their families.

Finally, Dr Kurt Sengul from MCCALL was successful for the project, ‘Media populism, democracy, and the public sphere in Australia’. This project aims to provide the first significant study of media populism in Australia across digital and traditional media. Adopting an innovative and interdisciplinary conceptual approach, it will benchmark evidence to help journalists, scholars and policymakers understand the implications of media populism for liberal democracy and an inclusive public sphere. The project will develop a new theory of media populism; inform policymakers on the role of media populism in processes of political polarisation, extremism and the erosion of democracy; and devise recommendations for media practitioners on how to avoid amplifying populist discourses for a more vibrant and multicultural public sphere.