Broad Area Award · 2026
The ten finalist universities are the ten highest-scoring across all 6 subject indices in social sciences (Arts & Humanities, Business, Management & Accounting, Decision Sciences, Economics, Econometrics & Finance, Psychology, Social Sciences), from 1,062 universities ranked in every one of them. 10 finalists are represented by a verified academic and project from the subject awards.
The finalists
FinTech as a Game Changer: Overview of Research Frontiers
Mobile payments, cryptocurrencies and the digitisation of business assets have pushed financial technology to the stage of disruptive innovation. Surveying this emerging FinTech landscape, the work reviews the technological, pedagogical and managerial issues involved, focusing on market trading, artificial intelligence and blockchain in finance, and maps research directions to stimulate future work across information systems and finance.
Data on transgender and gender diverse people who return to living as their sex assigned at birth have been scarce, leaving the topic to argument rather than evidence. Drawing on the US Transgender Survey of 27,715 adults, the study examines how many reported a history of detransition and the reasons they gave, combining multiple-choice answers with analysis of their own written responses.
New generation antidepressants for depression in children and adolescents: a network meta-analysis
Major depressive disorder affects children's education, relationships and wellbeing, and clinicians face a growing range of newer antidepressant medications. Using network meta-analysis, the study compared the effectiveness and safety of newer generation antidepressants for young people with diagnosed depression, examining depression outcomes, functioning and suicide-related outcomes alongside the influence of age, treatment duration, severity and industry funding.
Drawing on the lived experience of sixteen teachers of English from multilingual backgrounds, the study argues for rethinking Australia's English as an Additional Language curriculum as a 'folding' democratic practice. Using hermeneutic phenomenology and narrative inquiry, it shows how those teachers work beyond a curriculum dominated by Australian Standard English to respond ethically to diverse learners.
Oldest cave art found in Sulawesi
In the limestone karsts of South Sulawesi, the team applied uranium-series dating to two newly found cave paintings of warty pigs. The older, from Leang Tedongnge, has a minimum age of 45,500 years, making it the earliest known representational artwork identified so far, and the researchers are careful to note there is no reason to think it stands alone in the region.
Climate Change and Cultural Heritage: A Systematic Literature Review (2016-2020)
Historic places are exposed to a changing climate, and this systematic review takes stock of what researchers have learned. Assessing 165 publications from 2016 to 2020, it finds a growing and methodologically diverse field that remains weighted towards Europe, with comparatively little work on integrating heritage into adaptation and mitigation rather than documenting physical damage.
Light slowly destroys colour, which is why museums filter their windows and some medicines come in light-tight packaging. This overview gathers what is already known about the photodegradation of dyes and pigments, both in solution and on substrates, covering the parameters that govern how quickly it happens and the analysis of the degradation products left behind.
Digital transformation, for better or worse: a critical multi‐level research agenda
Digital technologies are reshaping customers, organisations, markets and society, yet research has largely stayed at the level of the single firm. This paper proposes a broader definition of digital transformation as socioeconomic change and sets out a multi-level research agenda spanning individuals, organisations, ecosystems and societies, deliberately keeping both the benefits and the harms in view.
Decoupling of SDGs followed by re-coupling as sustainable development progresses
Progress on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals does not happen in isolation, as advances on one goal can move with or against others. The study examines relationships among the goals over time, describing a pattern in which they first decouple and later re-couple as sustainable development progresses, insight relevant to coordinating policy across goals.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence on learning during the COVID-19 pandemic
Pulling together the studies published across the pandemic years, the work systematically reviews and meta-analyses the evidence on what happened to children's learning during COVID-19. Establishing what the literature collectively shows, rather than what any single study reported, is the groundwork that any serious response to lost learning depends on.
Exclusive to partners
Finalists are identified from open data; winners are decided by our editorial team and announced on 15 September 2026.
Explore partnership →