Institute for
Social Science Research

2023 ANNUAL REPORT

The Institute for Social Science Research acknowledges the Traditional Owners and their custodianship of the lands on which The University of Queensland operates. We pay our respects to their Ancestors and their descendants, who continue cultural and spiritual connections to Country.

About ISSR

The Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR) is an international leader in advanced interdisciplinary and solution-focused social science research and evaluation for positive social impact in a changing environment.

Our modern, outward-looking social science research workforce partners with government, private and not-for-profit sectors to undertake advanced solution-focused research into topics, questions and issues that matter in the real world.

ISSR is also the administrative headquarters for the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course and is affiliated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child and the Stillbirth Centre of Research Excellence.

OUR DIRECTOR

A crowd of people silhouetted in the sunset with a ripple in a pool of water overlaid in the foreground.

It is hard to believe it is 2024 – it only felt like yesterday that I was writing my message for last year’s report.

While 2023 seemed to fly by, ISSR had another successful and productive year. Despite the challenging external environment having a strong impact on increased budgetary pressures, ISSR continued to grow partnerships, fostered new professional development opportunities for staff, and secured diverse opportunities for financial sustainability.

One example of this in 2023 was the Department of Social Services engaging ISSR as the ‘Foundation Partner’ for the National Centre for Place-Based Collaboration (Nexus Centre) – which aims to facilitate more inclusive and effective place-based partnerships between communities, governments, the non-government sector, business, and investors. This project is being delivered in partnership with the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) and Collaboration for Impact.

At the end of 2023, ISSR established a new partnership agreement with Multicultural Australia, with a shared commitment to progress research addressing the inequities that migrant and refugee communities face in Queensland. Our partner-focused approach has underpinned our revised strategic planning through 2023, and I look forward to sharing the details of the future of ISSR in the months ahead.

As always, ISSR’s strength is our people, and I want to thank our staff and students for their amazing efforts, resilience and continued collegiality through 2023.

The post-pandemic resource pressures on the higher education sector cannot be understated and has a direct impact on our staff and students. Your dedication to the Institute and the work that you do is inspiring, and I remain committed to ensuring that ISSR is the respectful, inclusive and nurturing environment that you deserve.

As we saw across 2023, life is unpredictable and constantly changing, with natural disasters, political instability, housing crises, and rising cost of living front and centre in all our lives. The social sciences are needed more than ever to help develop effective, practical and inclusive solutions for a sustainable future.

In 2024, I look forward to another productive and impactful year for ISSR in this endeavour.

2023 SNAPSHOT

Income and resources: Bar graph of ISSR income over the last 5 years. 62 Staff members. 29 HDR students.

Training and development courses: 6 professional short courses attended by 94 participants (47 internal staff and students, 47 external participants from government and non-government organisations). 15 Career Development Framework online courses for UQ HDR students (run through UQ Graduate School) attended by 322 UQ HDR students. 17 Research internship scholars. Outputs: 14 books and book chapters, 42 research reports, 96 journal articles, 9 working papers, 38 conference publications.

Media: 2,481 online mentions of ISSR research including: 1,789 social media mentions, 681 news and blogs mentions, 11 Wikipedia and policy mentions. Partners and funders: 4 projects with federal government research bodies (ARC and NHMRC), 18 projects involving other organisations, including universities, 17 projects with government departments (federal and state), 29 different funders. Impact: 126 citations from 44 countries, 76% in top quartile journals.

PARTNERS

Australian Government

Department of Education
Department of Home Affairs
Department of Health and Aged Care
Department of Social Services
Office of Road Safety

State Government

Health and Wellbeing Queensland
New South Wales Department of Education
Queensland Department of Education
Queensland Department of Environment and Science
Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General
Queensland Department of Treaty, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, Communities and the Arts
Queensland Health
Queensland Police Service

Research Council

Australian Research Council
National Health and Medical Research Council

Other

ARTD Consultants
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority
Brisbane Youth Service Inc
Institute for Urban Indigenous Health
Multicultural Australia
Queensland Treasury Corporation
Red Nose Limited
The Bryan Foundation
Thriving Queensland Kids Partnership

University

Australian National University
Curtin University
Queensland University of Technology
University of New South Wales
The University of Queensland

RECONCILIATION JOURNEY

Reconciliation is an ongoing journey that reminds us that while generations of Australians have fought hard for meaningful change, future gains are likely to take just as much, if not more, effort.
Reconciliation Australia

ISSR recognises the significant contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, students, organisations and community have made and continue to make to UQ, Australia and our global society. ISSR also believes that the social sciences have a responsibility to lead genuine reconciliation based on involvement, inclusion, direct action, and critical research and scholarship aimed at progressing the reconciliation movement on a local and national scale.

Australian society is enriched through the development of deeper and shared understanding and learning from Indigenous knowledge and knowledge systems, which are foundational to our intellectual, social and cultural life.

To aid our reconciliation journey, ISSR established an Indigenous Engagement Working Group in 2022 to develop and facilitate engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers, communities, and partners. Led by the Working Group, ISSR released the ISSR Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) Implementation Plan 2023 as a key platform to guide our research and engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The ISSR RAP Implementation Plan 2023 was prepared in response to UQ's current RAP, and we will look to develop a revised ISSR RAP Implementation Plan once the new UQ Stretch RAP is available.

Through the ISSR RAP Implementation Plan 2023, ISSR has undertaken a range of actions to better respond to the needs and priorities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. In the past year ISSR has built a partnership with the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health on a couple of important projects and seen increased and improved engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers within UQ.

Dr Miriam Yates was also awarded a UQ Early to Mid-Career Researcher Industry Engagement Award for her work in partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (Australia) and Mimal Land Management for the project ‘Amplifying the voices of Australia’s First Nation women caring for Country.’

As our reconciliation journey continues, ISSR remains committed to reconciliation, supporting constitutional recognition, Truth Telling and Healing, and Path to Treaty – all while not forgetting that we still have a long road to travel.

Financials

Consolidated Income and Expenditure Statement 2021–2023

Revenue	2021 ($)	2022 ($)	2023 ($)
Grants (Research Income)
ARC Research	8,953,251	4,254,262	4,690,746
NHMRC Research	512,954	99,208	1,747
Cooperative Research Centres	0	0	0
Australian Government Research	1,732,268	1,165,426	4,081,548
State Government Research: Queensland	2,432,477	1,562,419	777,071
State Government Research: Other	271,301	140,951	37,828
Third Party Collaborations	2,044,442	1,623,430	781,318
Operating
Research Block Grants	1,667,138	2,345,189	2,553,786
Other Research Income and Recoveries	42,168	64,042	74,960
Internal Allocations	1,995,662	2,475,942	1,744,007
Sales and Services	685,967	1,176,477	992,929
Other
Sponsorships	0	0	0
Total Revenue	20,337,628	14,907,346	15,735,940
Expenditure
Projects
Salaries	5,351,261	3,393,142	2,988,785
Research Services	467,497	343,773	716,589
Scholarships	85,376	88,509	46,754
Collaborative Projects	3,121,629	2,959,073	3,909,166
Other Expenses	139,305	111,483	69,155
Operating
Salaries	5,217,105	6,588,326	5,800,135
Equipment	70,537	83,372	97,609
Infrastructure	105,395	59,022	61,966
Scholarships	28,538	32,557	21,360
Collaborative Projects	0	105,000	-45,900
Other Expenses	468,435	668,329	582,518
Total Expenditure	15,055,078	14,432,587	14,248,136
End of Year Position	5,282,550	474,759	1,487,804

In 2021, ISSR received a double year payment for the new Life Course Centre in a single payment, as per ARC funding process, which resulted in a significant increase in ARC Research Income, resulting in the large favourable End of Year Position.

In 2022, Consultancy expenditure at UQ was reclassified from Restricted Projects to Operating, which resulted in a decrease in expenditure in Salaries in Restricted Projects and an increase in expenditure in Salaries in Operating in 2022 and 2023 compared to 2021.