Deep history research is by its nature collaborative, bringing together disciplines from across the humanities and sciences to help explore and better understand the deep human past. The Research Centre for Deep History is honoured to collaborate with many scholars around the world, all of whom contribute to our ongoing work in a variety of ways.
Ingrid Ahlgren
Ingrid Ahlgren is the Curator of Oceania at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology at Harvard University. She studies the intersections of Pacific identity, environment, sacred beliefs, and material culture. Previously, she conducted research at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of National History. She also led an assessment of the impact of the museum’s Recovering Voices Community Research Program, which enables Indigenous communities to conduct museum-based research to save, document, and enliven their languages, cultures, and knowledge systems.
Dr Brit Asmussen
Dr Brit Asmussen works at the Queensland Museum, as the Senior Curator of Archaeology, Indigenous Cultures, in the Cultures and Histories Program. Her interests include working with museum collections, and understanding the long-term connections between people-places-and cultural objects. Brit is a Partner Investigator on Epic Australia, with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH), a collaborating institution with the Rediscovering the Deep Human Past Laureate Program.
Dr Lawrence Bamblett
Dr Laurie Bamblett is a Wiradjuri historian teaching at the Australian National University. He uses history as a tool of community development projects at his home community Erambie Mission. Laurie’s research interests include cultural resurgence and the ways that representations of identity affect engagement between Aboriginal communities and mainstream institutions and services. This experience and his role as co-director with the Australian Centre for Indigenous History create strong links with the Research Centre for Deep History’s endeavours.
Professor Linda Barwick
Professor Linda Barwick is a musicologist based at The University of Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music and co-founder of digital archive PARADISEC (Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures). Her research interests centre on the role of music in social identity and place, to which end she has collaborated with linguists, historians and Indigenous researchers in numerous community-based projects documenting song traditions. Linda’s current participation in several Australian Research Council projects deals with revitalisation of song and languages.
Dr Shauna Bostock-Smith
Shauna Bostock-Smith is an Australian Aboriginal woman who is descended from Bundjalung country in northern New South Wales. Her thesis concerns An Aboriginal family history over five generations. Shauna is interested in multiple scales of history and how they create an almost 3D delineation of individual, familial, and collective Aboriginal experience. Zooming in to individual ancestors’ and zooming out to big history facilitates a heartfelt, ethereal re-connection to pre-colonisation ancestors.
Associate Professor Bruce Buchan
Bruce Buchan is an intellectual historian whose work focuses on the entanglement of European political thought with the experience of empire and colonisation in the era of Enlightenment. His recent publications include *An Intellectual History of Political Corruption* (2014), and *Sound, Space and Civility in the British World*, 1700-1850 (2019), as well as special issues of *Cultural Studies Review *(2018), *Republics of Letters* (2018), and *History of the Human Sciences* (2019). Bruce has been invited to visiting professorships at the University of Copenhagen (2015-16) and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (2017), and has been named a Fernand Braudel Senior Research Fellow at the European University Institute in 2021.
Professor Pratik Chakrabarti
Pratik Chakrabarti is a Chair in the history of science and medicine and Director of the Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at the University of Manchester. He has contributed widely to the history of science, medicine, and imperial history from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. His current and future work on the Deep History of the Global South has direct relevance to the Research Centre for Deep History’s endeavours.
Professor Joyce Chaplin
Joyce E. Chaplin is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University. A former Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom and Guggenheim Fellow, she has taught at six different universities on two continents, a peninsula, and an island, and in a maritime studies program on the Atlantic Ocean. She is most interested in topics where humans and nature meet, including subjects in the history of science, environmental history, and intellectual history.
Professor Annie Clarke
Annie Clarke is Professor in Archaeology and Heritage Studies at Sydney University, working across Australian archaeology (Indigenous, historical and contemporary), museum and heritage studies. She has carried out research on the late Holocene archaeology of North East Arnhem Land, Indigenous interactions with Macassans and missionaries on Groote Eylandt, historical inscriptions and graffiti at the Quarantine Station, Manly, and nineteenth century ethnographic collections from Papua New Guinea.
Professor Brenda L Croft
Brenda L Croft is Professor of Indigenous Art History and Curatorship at the Australian National University. She from the Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra peoples from the Victoria River region of the Northern Territory of Australia, and Anglo-Australian/German/Irish/Chinese heritage. Brenda’s four decades multi-disciplinary creative-led research encompasses critical performative Indigenous autoethnography, First Nations Storywork/Storying and embodied cultural archaeology. Her creative-led research is grounded in long-standing culturally respectful engagement with Australian and international First Nations communities, especially patrilineal family and community members. In 2024 Brenda will be the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University across the Departments of History of Art and Architecture, and Art, Film, and Visual Studies. Brenda is privileged to live and work on the unceded sovereign lands of the Ngambri/Ngunnawal Peoples.
Professor Philip Deloria
Philip J Deloria is Professor of History at Harvard University, where his research and teaching focus on the social, cultural and political histories of the relations among American Indian peoples and the United States, as well as the comparative and connective histories of indigenous peoples in a global context. He is also a trustee of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, where he chairs the Repatriation Committee.
Dr Robin Derricourt
Robin Derricourt is an archaeologist, historian, writer and publisher, currently Honorary Professor at the School of Humanities & Languages, University of New South Wales. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Recent books include Inventing Africa (2011), Antiquity Imagined (2015) and Unearthing Childhood: young lives in prehistory (2018).
Dr Charlotte Feakins
Charlotte Feakins is Team Leader and Senior Heritage Consultant in First Nations heritage at GML Heritage in Sydney, research associate at the University of Canberra and sessional lecturer in Museum and Heritage Studies at the University of Sydney. Charlotte has received a range of accolades, including a university medal and the Maureen Byrne Memorial Prize for Best Postgraduate thesis. Her collaborations across research and industry foster critical thinking through everyday praxis.
Associate Professor Catherine Frieman
Catherine Frieman is an Associate Professor in European archaeology in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University. Her primary research interests include innovation and conservatism, and she is a material culture and technology specialist with a particular specialism in stone tools. She currently holds a DECRA fellowship to study conservatism and resistance via the archaeology of prehistoric Cornwall and is Lead Chief Investigator of an ARC Discovery project looking into human mobility and the diffusion of innovations in prehistoric Iberia and the Pacific.
Professor Tom Gedeon
Tom Gedeon is Professor of Computer Science and Head of the Human Centred Computing Research Area in the Research Centre for Computer Science at the Australian National University. Tom’s research uses artificial intelligence tools such as neural networks on sensor data from humans (primarily skin conductance and pupil dilation) to predict/recognise human internal states such as emotion, attention, stress, doubt and cognitive load.
Professor Jay Gitlin
Jay Gitlin is Associate Director of the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders at Yale. He has taught at Yale for over thirty years and is Senior Lecturer in the History Department, teaching courses on the American West, Québec and Canada, Native American history, suburbanization, popular music, and the history of shopping. He has four Yale degrees, including a PhD in History and a master’s from the School of Music.
Professor Quentin Grafton
Quentin Grafton is an Australian Laureate Fellow, Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance and Professor of Economics at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. He is Editor in Chief of Policy Forum.net, Executive Editor of the Global Water Forum and Convenor of both the Water Justice Hub and the Geneva Actions on Human Water Security.
Professor Simon Haberle
Professor Simon Haberle is a palaeoecologist who uses his expertise in geography, palynology and charcoal analysis to reconstruct past environments. The focus of his research is to understand the impact that people and climate have had on ecosystems through time. He has worked extensively across Australia and New Guinea and has ongoing projects in China and the islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. He is also developing digital tools for archiving and providing access to significant natural history collections for researchers and the general public.
Dr Greta Hawes
Greta Hawes is a scholar of Greek myth based at the Australian National University’s School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics. Her work examines ancient – and sometimes more recent – contexts for storytelling, the Greeks’ assessment of mythic phenomena in their own culture, and the modes of interpretation to which these gave rise. Her current research explores the spatial dynamics of ancient storytelling and the various intricate relationships between myths and land. For the years 2017-20, her research is supported by an ARC DECRA award.
Azure Hermes
Azure Hermes works at the National Centre for Indigenous Genomics at the ANU John Curtin School of Medical Research. She is forging a new approach to the ethically and culturally challenging topic of Indigenous genomic research. Azure is from the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji people, traditional custodians of the Cairns area.
Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington
Marnie Hughes-Warrington is Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research and Enterprise at the University of South Australia, and a past Professor of History at the Australian National University, specialising in history theory and macro histories. Across several books and articles, she has looked to histories across the world to test, extend and to revise philosophical arguments about the nature, purpose and ethics of history. The Research Centre for Deep History provides a very fruitful connection with her current work on rescaling the ethics of history to include deep and big approaches, and to acknowledge Indigenous peoples as the makers of histories.
Dr Julia Hurst
Julia Hurst is an Indigenous woman whose heritage crosses Darug and Dharawal country. She completed her PhD in 2019 at ANU and was the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow from 2018-2020. Her research intersects with Aboriginal history, place, and identity.
Dr Mary Anne Jebb
Mary Anne Jebb is currently a Visiting Research Fellow with AIATSIS. Her PhD, which was published as *Blood Sweat and Welfare* (2002), won the WK Hancock Award. As an historian and curator, Mary Anne specialises in creating collaborative histories with Indigenous communities that draw upon oral recordings to bring Indigenous voices to the forefront of history in texts, short films and multi-media exhibitions. She has worked with many communities in Western Australia and co-curated exhibitions for cultural centres.
Professor Lisa Kewley
Lisa Jennifer Kewley is a Professor and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at the Australian National University. Kewley obtained her PhD in 2002 from the Australian National University on the connection between star-formation and supermassive black holes in galaxies. She was a Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Fellow and a NASA Hubble Fellow. Her awards include the 2006 American Astronomical Society Annie Jump Cannon Award, the 2008 American Astronomical Society Newton Lacy Pierce Prize, and the 2020 US National Academy of Science James Craig Watson Medal. In 2014, Kewley was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science “for her fundamental advances in understanding of the history of the universe, particularly star and galaxy formation”, and in 2015, Kewley was awarded an ARC Laureate Fellowship, Australia’s top fellowship to support excellence in research. Kewley is currently implementing her scientific vision through her Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in All-Sky Astrophysics in 3D (ASTRO 3D).
Dr Shino Konishi
Shino Konishi is a Yawuru historian based at the University of Western Australia. Her research explores representations of Aboriginal people, bodies and culture, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She currently leads an ARC project on Indigenous biographies in collaboration with the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and is involved in another ARC project on Western Australian collections.
Professor Paul Lane
Paul Lane is the Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer Professor of the Deep History and Archaeology of Africa at the University of Cambridge. He is a former President of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists (2008-10) and Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa (1998-2006), with over thirty-five years’ research experience in Africa. His interests include post-colonial and Indigenous archaeology in Africa, landscape historical ecology, and the origins and development of farming and herding in eastern Africa.
Professor Philippa Levine
Philippa Levine is the Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas at the University of Texas at Austin (USA) and Co-director of the University’s Programme in British Studies. She has written on the history of feminism, of socially transmissible diseases, prostitution and eugenics as well as the British Empire. Philippa’s extensive knowledge, particularly on eugenics, will provide important insights to the Research Centre for Deep History.
Dr Leah Lui-Chivizhe
Leah Lui-Chivizhe is a Torres Strait Islander with enduring family ties to Mer, Erub, Badu and Mabuiag islands. A historian and curator, her current work is focused on nineteenth century ethnographic and natural history collections and facilitating Islander engagements with these collections for knowledge recovery and performing history.
Kim Mahood
Kim Mahood is the author of Craft for a Dry Lake, (Random House 2000), and Position Doubtful – Mapping Landscape and Memory (Scribe 2016), and essays, poetry and fiction. Her artwork is held in state, territory and regional collections. She co-ordinates cross-cultural mapping projects with Aboriginal groups in remote, regional and urban locations.
Dr Sally May
Dr Sally K. May is a Senior Research Fellow with the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research at Griffith University. As an archaeologist and anthropologist her research focuses on relationships between people, landscapes, material culture and imagery, with inspiration drawn primarily from fieldwork in northern Australia. Sally is the author of the book ‘Collecting Cultures’ (2009) and co-author of ‘The Bible in Buffalo Country: Oenpelli mission 1925-1931’ (2020).
Professor John Maynard
Professor John Maynard is a Worimi Aboriginal man who is currently Chair of Aboriginal History at the University of Newcastle and Director of the Purai Global Indigenous History Centre. He has held several major positions and served on numerous prominent organizations and committees. Professor Maynard has worked with and within many Aboriginal communities, urban, rural and remote. His many publications have concentrated on the intersections of Aboriginal political and social history, and the history of Australian race relations.
Professor Jo McDonald
Professor Jo McDonald is Director of the Centre for Rock Art Research + Management at the University of Western Australia. She has been recording rock art in Australia for almost 40 years. Jo holds the RioTinto Chair in Rock Art Studies. She was Lead CI on the ARC Murujuga: Dynamics of the Dreaming Linkage Project (2014-2018) and a CI on the Deep History of Sea Country Discovery Project (2016-2019).
Crystal McKinnon
Crystal McKinnon is from the Amangu, Yamatji Nation and is the Vice Chancellor’s Indigenous Research Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University. Her research centres on histories of Indigenous sovereignty and social movements. Interests also include Indigenous people and communities, and the Australian legal system. Crystal currently sits on the steering committee for the Law and Advocacy Centre for Women and is a co-editor of Aboriginal History journal.
Dr Annemarie McLaren
Dr Annemarie McLaren is a Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia and a lecturer at the University of Notre Dame (Fremantle). She researches cross-cultural relations and the British empire with a focus on the Australian colonies. In 2020 she was awarded the Serle Award for her PhD thesis which she is expanding into a book. She has held fellowships at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Cambridge), the Omohundro-Institute (Virginia), and Griffith University (Brisbane).
Ruth Morgan
Ruth Morgan is an Associate Professor in the School of History and Director of the Centre for Environmental History at The ANU. She has published widely on the climate and water histories of Australia and the British Empire, and she is a Lead Author in Working Group II of the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Dr Tom Murray
Tom Murray is an ARC DECRA research fellow, an academic and media producer in the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University. Much of his work has been in collaboration with Australian Indigenous communities. Tom’s documentaries have been selected for the world’s most prestigious film festivals. These works have won awards including the New South Wales Premier’s History Award and the Australian Directors Guild Award for best feature documentary.
Professor Heidi Norman
Professor Heidi Norman researches and publishes in the areas of NSW Aboriginal history and politics. As part of the School of Communication at UTS, she manages the Indigenous Land and Justice Research Hub. She has published a study titled What Do We Want (2015) and in 2019 with colleagues published a study titled Does the Media Fail Aboriginal Political Aspirations?. She is a descendant of the Gomeroi people from north western NSW and member of the NSW Aboriginal Affairs Research Advisory Group and AIATSIS.
Dr Maria Nugent
Maria Nugent is Senior Research Fellow in the School of History at Australian National University, and Co-director with Dr Lawrence Bamblett of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History. She is currently Chief Investigator on two large collaborative ARC Linkage Projects: The Relational Museum and Its Objects, and The Wild Australia Show. Maria’s teaching and research experience, together with her role with the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, create strong links with the Research Centre for Deep History.
Professor Patrick Nunn
Patrick Nunn is Professor of Geography at the University of the Sunshine Coast and directs research throughout the Asia-Pacific region focused on memories of ancient events including sea-level rise and volcanism. He is especially interested in how such traditional knowledge might be useful for helping communities adapt to climate change. Patrick has a long-standing interest in deep-time Indigenous/oral knowledge, especially in Australia and the Pacific Islands.
Dr Frances Peters-Little
Frances Peters-Little is a visiting research fellow at Jumbunna at University of Technology Sydney and Managing Director of the Jimmy Little Foundation. She established an Aboriginal art gallery in the opal fields of Lightning Ridge, on Yuwaalaraay country. Frances is a filmmaker, historian, author and musician. Among her most-recognised films are Vote Yes for Aborigines (2007) and Tent Embassy (1992).
Dr Laura Rademaker
Dr Laura Rademaker is Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Centre for Indigenous History at the Australian National University. She was formerly a Postdoctoral Fellow and Deputy Director at the Research Centre for Deep History and now holds an ARC DECRA. Laura is the author of Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission (University of Hawai’i Press, 2018) on language and cross-cultural exchange at Christian missions to Aboriginal people, awarded the 2020 Hancock Prize. Her work explores the possibilities of ‘cross-culturalising’ history, interdisciplinary histories as well as oral history and memory. Laura is currently a collaborating scholar with the Research Centre for Deep History.
Dr Julie Rickwood
Julie Rickwood is currently a visitor with the Centre for Environmental History in the School of History. She holds a PhD in interdisciplinary cross-cultural research with a focus on community and popular music and its intersections with cross-cultural exchange and common ground, heritage, gender, place and the environment. Julie is also a practitioner in community choirs and contemporary improvisational dance. She was the Research Centre’s inaugural Project Manager.
Dr Shirleene Robinson
Dr Shirleene Robinson is Senior Curator of Oral History and Indigenous Programs at the National Library of Australia and also an Honorary Associate Professor of Modern History at Macquarie University. She is an experienced practitioner of oral history herself, including pathbreaking projects with the LGBTI community, and currently serves as President of Oral History New South Wales. Together with her curatorial experience of historical exhibitions, Shirleene’s experience is in valuable to the Rediscovering the Deep Human Past Laureate Program. Shirleene has provided training in oral history practice and equipment for our team and Indigenous community groups.
Dr Michael Slack
Director of Scarp Archaeology, Michael is one of Australia’s leading archaeological consultants, specialising in remote arid and semi- arid environments. He has qualifications in archaeology and in history from Sydney University, the Australian National University, and University of New South Wales. Since 2007, Michael has led many large-scale survey and excavation projects throughout Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales. He is also part of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage team.
Professor Daniel Smail
Daniel Lord Smail is professor of history at Harvard University, where he works on deep human history and the history and anthropology of Mediterranean societies between 1100 and 1600. His current research approaches transformations in the material culture of later medieval Mediterranean Europe using household inventories and inventories of debt collection from Lucca and Marseille. Daniel’s role as a Collaborating Scholar continues well-established and greatly valued contributions to Deep History Programs, including co-convening two important symposia with our project at Harvard University.
Sonia Smallacombe
Sonia is a member of the Maramanindji people from the Daly River area. She worked as a Social Affairs Officer with the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues for eleven years. Prior to joining the UN, Sonia was a Senior Lecturer in the School of Australian Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Charles Darwin University. Her Masters thesis was on the intellectual and cultural property rights of Indigenous peoples.
Professor Gregory Smithers
Greg Smithers is Professor of American history and Eminent Scholar in the College of Humanities and Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University. His research and writing focuses on the histories of Indigenous people and African Americans from the eighteenth century to the present. He has also completed important Australian-American comparative studies that foreground gender and race. Greg is particularly interested in the rich history of the Cherokee people, Indigenous history in the Southeast, and environmental history.
Dr Mathew Trinca
Dr Mathew Trinca is the Director of the National Museum of Australia. Mathew’s interests span the 20th century history of Australia, with a focus on the social and cultural relationships between Britain and Australia. He also has interest in the historical and contemporary links between Australia and Asia. Under Mathew’s leadership, the National Museum has developed strongly engaged national and international programs that focus on bringing alive the stories of Australia.
Dr Henning Trüper
Henning Trüper currently works as a research fellow at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL), Berlin, after holding research positions in Zurich, Paris, Princeton, Berlin, and Helsinki. He works on matters to do with the history and theory of history writing and the humanities more generally, as well as the history of humanitarianism. As a past visitor with the RDHP Program, Henning’s role as a Collaborating Scholar continues his well-established relationship with the Rediscovering the Deep Human Past Laureate Program.
Professor Peter Veth
Peter Veth is Director of the University of Western Australia (UWA) Oceans Institute which has the mandate to foster and profile research on marine science and societies across UWA faculties and collaborating organisations. He sits on the Executive of the Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre which has a Research Committee and Building Management Committee under it. He currently serves on the ARC College of Experts and is a Lead and Chief Investigator on three Australian Research Council Projects. His contribution to the Research Centre for Deep History’s endeavours brings a proven track record in pathbreaking archaeological research.
Dr Robert Wellington
Robert Wellington is a Senior Lecturer and DECRA fellow at the Centre for Art History and Art Theory at ANU. He is an art historian with a special interest in the role of material culture in history making and cross-cultural exchange. Prior to receiving a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Sydney, he had ten years’ experience in various roles in the contemporary arts sector. Robert was the inaugural convenor of the ANU French Research Cluster, and is currently the ACT representative of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ).
Dr Duncan Wright
Duncan Wright is Senior Lecturer at The Australian National University, specialising in Australian Indigenous archaeology. His research involves collaborations with Torres Strait Islander and Australian Aboriginal communities who seek to historicise practices and places of social, political and/or spiritual significance. Duncan is currently working on two ARC funded projects, one exploring long-term human connections on Australia’s northern border, and the other a long-term history of the Namunidjbuk estate in the Wellington Range region, Arnhem Land.
Sarah Yu
Sarah Yu is the Special Projects Officer with Nyamba Buru Yawuru Ltd, Broome. As an anthropologist she worked on several native title claims and produced several Indigenous Protected Areas plans, including the award-winning Yawuru Cultural Management Plan. Sarah has also curated a number of exhibitions, including the award-winning Lustre: Pearling & Australia. Now completing a doctoral thesis on pearling heritage in the Kimberley, Sarah also brings to the Research Centre for Deep History her experience on cultural mapping, interpretation and exhibitions.