Composer Liza Lim has been awarded one of 17 prestigious Australian Laureate Fellowships by the Australian Research Council.

Lim is the first musician to be awarded the ARC Fellowship. Of the 17 Fellowships, 14 were awarded to researchers in science, mathematics and technology disciplines, two in the humanities and creative arts, and one in the social, behavioural, and economic sciences.

Currently the Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Lim will receive $3.74m to fund a five-year program to communicate the urgency of climate change and lead social change through music.

Liza Lim. Photo © Maurice Weiss

Lim will use the funding to advance Australia’s growing access to international markets by creating compelling arts experiences for people to access and respond to ecological ideas in ways that can provoke social change.

The program centres music and the arts in investigating how animals, plants and living systems sense and communicate, producing new creative works, new technologies with potential applications for Australia’s $115 billion-per-annum creative and cultural industries sector, and a unique training program in music with unprecedented access to international networks.

“This is a path-opening program of work connecting music and the...