Monash tops more research fields than any other university

Monash University is the stand-out achiever in the latest look at national research performance in The Australian’s 2025 Research magazine.

Monash University’s Bridget Harris is Australia's leading researcher in criminology, criminal law and policing. Picture: Nadir Kinani

Monash University is the national leader in more research fields than any other university in the nation, according to The Australian’s in-depth analysis of research ­performance.

The top 250 list in the 2025 Research magazine in today’s Australian, shows that Monash leads in 55 research fields, well ahead of the University of NSW, which leads in 28, and the University of Queensland, which leads in 27.

It means that Monash is ahead of its competitors in more than one-fifth of the 250 fields of research analysed in the 2025 Research magazine. Monash also led the pack in last year’s Research magazine when it was top in 53 fields of research.

The 2025 Research magazine names Australia’s top researcher, and top research institution, in 250 individual fields of research, providing a deep dive look at Australia’s research expertise with the work of 35 universities, and many other research institutions such as the CSIRO and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, being ­examined.

The Australian’s data science partner League of Scholars identifies the research leaders by analysing a mass of public inform­ation to find out which research­ers, and universities and other institutions, make the most impact through their work.

Mike Ryan, Monash’s interim deputy vice-chancellor (research), said the university owed its research strength to its “breadth and depth”.

“It’s not just a smattering of research stars – we’ve basically got a whole galaxy of them. They work well together, publish well together,” Professor Ryan said.

Not surprisingly, 25 of the fields in which Monash leads other universities are in the health and medical sciences discipline, where the university concentrates 60 per cent of its research effort.

Mike Ryan

Monash’s research is also wide-ranging and it came first in at least one field in all eight broad disciplines of research. Fields in which it is No 1 include fin­ance, biochemistry, theoretical computer science, feminism and women’s studies, pure and applied maths, and ethics.

Monash also has 32 researchers who, individually, are the top in their field in Australia. One of them, Bridget Harris, who heads the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, said it was “incredible” to hear from police officers how her work had been applied when they dealt with domestic and family violence.

“That’s why you do the work, because you want it to help in, and provide and evidence base for, policy and practice,” she told The Australian’s Research magazine.

“And while we celebrate the wins we also recognise that we have a long way to go.”