Research Bites is your research news digest which aims to capture the diverse research happening in our faculty, collated from various media outlets. In this edition…
Dr Milind Tiwari | AGSPS is pleased to share his new co-authored article, “Foreseeing Metacrime in Metaverse 2.0: The Impact of GenAI and Spatial GenAI,” published in Oxford Intersections: Borders by Oxford University Press (OUP).
The article examines how GenAI-powered immersive environments may reduce barriers to criminality and create new challenges for policing, accountability and cross-border regulation.
Dr Leo Lin | AGSPS had the distinct privilege of delivering the (virtual) inaugural address at the North American Conference on Computational Intelligence, Data Science and Cloud Computing (NACDC 2026), held at The University of British Columbia, Canada.
Speaking from the viewpoint of policing and security studies, Leo’s objective was to bridge the gap between technical development and security governance. As the capabilities of machine learning expand, so do our vulnerability surfaces. We are seeing malicious actors exploit these systems to carry out sophisticated cybersecurity breaches, AI-driven financial fraud, and large-scale scams. The rapid normalisation of deepfakes and voice cloning demonstrates that we need artificial intelligence deployed for robust intrusion detection just as urgently as we need it for commercial progress. His core message to the conference was: the technologies being developed in data science are neutral; their applications are not.
Last week, Dr Jamie Ferrill had the pleasure of running another Borders in Globalization (University of Victoria) Summer Institute on Border Security Management in Brussels.
Dr Ferrill and colleagues are very grateful to the student participants who joined in person at the European Commission and those who came in online from all over the world. The team always appreciate these Institutes as an opportunity to learn from the vast experience of everyone participating across the many sectors in this space. The engagement this year was next level, and a good reminder that this field runs on the accumulated effort of people working in very different institutional settings. Trust and cooperation emerged as a recurring theme across the week, underpinning much of what makes border security work at the global level.
New Research| AI for Smarter Livestock Management
Professor Rafiqul Islam and colleagues share their latest research which demonstrates that the quality of predictive features can be more important than treating every problem as a time-series task.
This research highlights how artificial intelligence can transform irregular, real-world agricultural data into reliable decision support, enabling more informed feed allocation, pasture utilisation, livestock marketing, and early anomaly detection in commercial grazing systems.
It is exciting to see AI creating practical impact in precision livestock farming and digital agriculture.
The School of Business congratulates Assoc Prof Nicholas Pawsey, Assoc Prof Tahmid Nayeem, and Fahad Asmi together with co-author Lee Baumgartner, on their recent publication in Sustainability: “How Media Trust Mediates the Adoption of Fish Screens by Irrigators in Australia: The Intermediate Effect of Resource Efficacy.“
Drawing on survey data from 192 irrigators across the Murray-Darling Basin, the study examines how trust in media shapes farmers’ willingness to adopt fish screens, a technology that protects native fish populations while improving irrigation efficiency. The findings show that trust in media significantly predicts adoption intention and resource (time) efficacy, with resource efficacy partially mediating this relationship, highlighting that having sufficient time to test and install new technology is just as important as trusting the information source.
The research offers practical guidance for policymakers, extension services and media organisations seeking to accelerate the uptake of sustainable irrigation practices in regional Australia.
