Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women PhD Scholarship

Monash University is offering a PhD scholarship in AI Detection of Misogynistic Backlash Ecosystems, an interdisciplinary project at the intersection of computer science, information technology, linguistics, statistics, and social science.

The project will investigate how natural language processing (NLP), large language models (LLMs), machine learning, and network analysis can be used to detect and analyse misogynistic backlash across social media and online platforms. Research themes include coordinated harassment, anti-gender equality mobilisation, extremist misogyny, violence-supportive discourse, benchmark dataset development, and explainable AI for online safety research.

The scholarship is based within the Faculties of Information Technology and Arts at Monash University and is supported by the Monash AI Institute and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW). The project is supervised by a multidisciplinary team including Professor Reza Haffari, Professor Jacqui True, Professor Asher Flynn, Dr Trang Vu, and Dr Katie Buchhorn.

Funding: full-time scholarship for 3.5 years with a tax-free Research Living Allowance of AUD 37,145 per year plus an additional AUD 10,000 per year CEVAW top-up.

Eligibility: applicants should have a background in computer science, IT, statistics, mathematics, computational linguistics, data science, or a related field. A strong interest in interdisciplinary research and experience with NLP, LLMs, machine learning, network analysis, social media analytics, or large-scale text analysis will be viewed favourably. The committee will prioritise applicants with an Australian or equivalent international Honours or Master’s degree with a significant research component and first-class honours/H1. Applicants must meet Monash PhD entry and English-language requirements and must not already hold a PhD.

Deadline: 10 August 2026, 11:55pm AEST. Applicants must first contact Dr Katie Buchhorn before submitting an application via My.App.