PEOPLE, IMAGES and THINGS
A two day conference 30-31 October 2015
SPEAKERS DETAILS
MICHAEL AIRD has worked in the area of Aboriginal arts and cultural heritage since 1985,
graduating in 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of
Queensland. He has curated over 25 exhibitions, published several academic articles and has
been involved in numerous research projects. In 1996 he established Keeaira Press an
independent publishing house and has produced over 30 books. Much of what Keeaira Press
has published focus on art and photography, which reflects Michael’s interest in recording
aspects of urban Aboriginal history and culture.
LINDY ALLEN is Senior Curator (Anthropology) at Museum Victoria and has worked for over
35 years in the museum sector. Her research work is focused on museum collections, in
particular from Arnhem Land, and includes investigation of their relevance to Yolngu. Lindy is
Partner Investigator on the Australian Research Council Linkage project, The Legacy of
Collecting at Milingimbi Mission. She co-edited a seminal volume on the history of collections
and collecting in Australia, The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum
Collections (Melbourne University Publishing, 2008), and also co-edited the volume The
Photographs of Baldwin Spencer (The Miegunyah Press, 2005).
JILDA ANDREWS is a Yuwaalaraay woman whose cultural identity hails from Walgett and
Lightning Ridge, north western New South Wales. She has a background in Indigenous
education and is currently a PhD candidate at the Australian National University researching
ways to 'add value' to Indigenous collections in Australian museums. Jilda performs with her
sisters in the singing groups Freshwater and Biliir, projects aimed to celebrate culture using
her traditional Yuwaalaraay and Gamilaraay languages. Jilda currently is the Access and
Outreach Programs Coordinator at the National Museum of Australia.
ELIZABETH BONSHEK is Senior Curator (Anthropology) at Museum Victoria and has worked
in the museum industry and with museum collections from the Pacific region since 1987. Her
research focuses on the material culture of the Pacific region, especially Melanesia, and on
historical and contemporary collecting and Indigenous responses to museum collections. She
is currently Partner Investigator on an ARC Linkage project, Excavating MacGregor: reconnecting a colonial museum collection, investigating the distributed collections of Sir
William MacGregor, the first Administrator of British New Guinea. Liz contributed editorially
and as an author to the book Melanesia. Art and encounter (British Museum, 2013) and has
a chapter in the recently released volume Beyond Memory: Silence and the Aesthetics of
Remembrance (Routledge, 2016).
IAN COATES is Head of Collections Development at the National Museum of Australia. Ian has
undertaken research in many museums in Australia, the UK and northern Europe, with a focus
on investigating the histories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander material held in
museums throughout the world. Ian has completed many exhibition and research projects,
often with a strong element of local community engagement. The most recent is the
Encounters exhibition collaboration between the NMA and British Museum. The intersection
between Indigenous and colonial histories, and the potential of museum collections to inform
new colonial narratives remains a key research passion.
CAROL COOPER is a curator, collections manager and historian, who has worked at the
Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the Public Service Merit
and Protection Commission and the National Museum of Australia. At the NMA, she has held
the positions of Senior Registrar, Head Curator Collections Development and Senior Curator
in the Research Centre. She has had a long-term research interest in Aboriginal Art and
collections, nineteenth century Aboriginal artists and the historical photography of Aboriginal
people. Her publications include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collections in Overseas
Museums, (AIAS, 1989), Traditional Visual Culture in South-east Australia (in Aboriginal Artists
of the 19th Century, Oxford University Press, 1994), Remembering Barak (NGV, 2003), and
contributed to the recent volume Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art (NGV, 2015). She is
undertaking doctoral research in the Centre for Heritage and Museums at the ANU.
REBECCA CONWAY is Curator, Ethnography, at the Macleay Museum at the University of
Sydney. She studied Australian Aboriginal and Pacific archaeology and has over twenty years’
experience working with archaeological, ethnographic and photographic collections in
museums and archives. The interaction of source communities with cultural heritage
materials held in such institutions is a key interest. Career highlights in this regard include
repatriation projects, community access programs, collaborating with Aboriginal cultural
centres and keeping places, documenting objects and historic photographs with Aboriginal
and Pacific community members, and creating and supporting exhibitions that promote new
understandings of Australian and Pacific histories inclusive of Indigenous perspectives.
FRAN EDMONDS is a Research Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the
University of Melbourne. She is currently working on the Australian Research Council Linkage
Project, Aboriginal young people in Victoria and Digital Storytelling. Her research interests are
interdisciplinary and include the intersection of Western and Indigenous knowledge systems,
the reclaiming of Aboriginal material culture through digital technologies, the relationship
between Aboriginal art and wellbeing and the exploration of methodological approaches to
cross-cultural research.
JASON GIBSON is Curator, Repatriation Research, at Museum Victoria and a PhD candidate
with the Monash Indigenous Centre (Monash University) investigating T.G.H. Strehlow’s
Anmatyerr ethnography. For more than 16 years Jason has worked extensively on
intercultural history and ethnography and has particular interest in the social and cultural
histories of the Arandic language region. Previous positions include Research Coordinator
with the Australian National University on the Spencer and Gillen ARC Linkage project and Coordinator of the NT Libraries “Libraries and Knowledge Centres” program.
JULIE GOUGH is an artist, a freelance curator and writer who lives in Hobart. Her research and
art practice often involves uncovering and re-presenting conflicting and subsumed histories,
many referring to her own and her family's experiences as Tasmanian Aboriginal people.
Gough curated TESTING GROUND (2013-2015), Tayenebe: Tasmanian Aboriginal Women’s
Fibrework (2009) at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in association with the NMA. She
was on the curatorial team for INSIDE: Life in Children’s Homes developed by the NMA in
2011. Her previous positions include Curator of Indigenous Art at the NGV (2003-5), lecturer
in Visual Arts, JCU (2003-5), lecturer in Aboriginal studies, UTAS (2001-2). Gough’s doctoral
thesis, Transforming histories: The visual disclosure of contentious pasts, was completed at
the University of Tasmania (2001), and she has an MA from Goldsmiths College, University of
London (1998), a BA Hons from UTAS (1995), a BA Visual Arts from Curtin University (1994)
and a BA Prehistory/English Literature from the University of Western Australia (1987).
Gough’s work is held in many public collections and has been exhibited widely in Australia
and overseas since 1994.
DIANE HAFNER is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research is focussed on Murri
communities of Cape York Peninsula, with particular interest in the Princess Charlotte Bay
region. Her primary interests are in the relationships between people, places, emotions and
the material expression of these. She currently leads an ARC Discovery grant considering
changes in notions of place in the Princess Charlotte Bay region over the last 130 years, which
investigates contemporary views as well as data contained in relevant ethnographic
collections. She is currently a senior lecturer at the University of Queensland.
LOUISE HAMBY is Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology,
Australian National University. Her research is focused on material culture from Arnhem Land,
historical and contemporary. She is Chief Investigator on the current Australian Research
Council Linkage project, The Legacy of Collecting at Milingimbi Mission, and is also currently
examining Indigenous fabric printing. Her most recent book is Containers of Power: Women
with Clever Hands, and she co-edited the volume, The Makers and Making of Indigenous
Australian Museum Collections (Melbourne University Publishing, 2008).
ROSITA HENRY is a Professor of Anthropology and Head of Social Sciences at James Cook
University. Her research concerns the interface between people, places and things as
expressed in practices and performances of everyday life. She is author of the book
Performing Place, Practicing Memory: Indigenous Australians, Hippies and the State
(Berghahn Books, 2012) and co-editor of The Challenge of Indigenous Peoples: Spectacle or
Politics? (Bardwell Press, 2011). More recently she has been conducting research in relation
to the ARC Discovery project, Objects of Possession: Artefact Transactions in the Wet Tropics
of North Queensland.
MELINDA HINKSON is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Australian Research Council
Future Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin
University. Among her recent publications are Remembering the Future: Warlpiri Life
throughout the Prism of Drawing (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2014) and a volume produced in
association with the exhibition curated with the National Museum of Australia. Melinda’s
current project explores Warlpiri place-making practices through the prism of diverse visual
media.
SABINE HOENG is Curator, Rock Art, at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.
She has conducted ethno-historical research on bark paintings, material culture objects and
rock art in Western and Central Arnhem Land. Her involvement with Indigenous community
members especially on Croker Island, but also Goulburn Island, Oenpelli and Maningrida
began over ten years ago, when she initiated and project-managed a cross-disciplinary
recording and publishing project (2004–2012) with the aim of documenting and maintaining
endangered knowledge of speakers of Iwaidja on Croker Island in areas such as oral history,
kinship structures, art, material culture, music and dance, ethno-biology and ecology.
JONATHON JONES is an artist and curator of the Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi communities of New
South Wales. He has worked for Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, Art Gallery of New
South Wales and National Gallery of Australia, and is currently curating the exhibition,
Murruwaygu: following in the footsteps of our ancestors, at AGNSW and opening in
November 2015. Jones is researching at the University of Technology, Sydney, and his
publications include Half light: portraits from black Australia (AGNSW, 2008) and La Per: an
Aboriginal seaside story (AGNSW, 2010). More recent writings include “A symphony of lines:
reading south-east shields” in Indigenous Australia: enduring civilization (British Museum,
2015) and “The art centre story” written with Frank Young in Nganampa kampatjaanka
uungutja (Beneath the canvas): Lives and stories of the Tjala artists (Tjala Arts, 2015).
CHRISTIANE KELLER is a Research Fellow in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at
the Australian National University on the ARC Linkage project, The Legacy of Collecting at
Milingimbi Mission. She is also currently Curator, Songlines Project, at the National Museum
of Australia. Over the last 16 years she worked with Indigenous communities, art centres and
artists across the country as a researcher, curator, anthropologist, art historian, writer and
filmmaker. Christiane has worked extensively on Aboriginal fibre art and is researching
sensory experiences of Aboriginal fibre artists. She directed the documentary Tjanpi Nyawa!
Look at the grass! (Artfilm, 2012).
LEAH LUI-CHIVIZHE currently lectures at the University of New South Wales’s Nura Gili on
cultural and environmental histories of the Torres Strait region. She has worked in the field of
tertiary education for fifteen years and has a background in both geography and museum
studies. Leah is currently completing a PhD at the University of Sydney on environmental
history and Torres Strait Islanders’ turtle shell masks.
PAUL MEMMOTT is a multi-disciplinary researcher and the Director of the Aboriginal
Environments Research Centre (AERC) and Professor in the School of Architecture and the
Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland. His research interests
are in people-environment relations of Indigenous peoples, encompassing Indigenous
housing and settlement design, Indigenous constructs of place and social planning in
Indigenous communities.
JUDE PHILP is Senior Curator at the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney. Her doctoral
research focused on Torres Strait Islanders philosophies of history in relation to 19 th century
material collections. Her curatorial work has increasingly encompassed cultural areas of
natural history collections. Jude’s research over the last twenty years has concentrated on
collections and histories of the south-east coast of Papua New Guinea.
ANTOINETTE SMITH was born in northern Tasmania and culturally her Aboriginal heritage is
in the north east region. Her family has a rich and varied history of convict and European
heritage from this region. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania
investigating early nineteenth century Tasmanian Aboriginal history. Antoinette has been
researching the Aboriginal history, languages and culture of south-eastern Australia for
twenty years. Until recently, Antoinette was the Senior Curator, Southeastern Australia
Aboriginal Collections at Museum Victoria, and her work prior to that included policy
development at the Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Branch of ATSIC and research for
the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages.
MARIKO SMITH is a Koori woman, descended from the Aboriginal Yuin Nation of the south
coast of New South Wales. She has worked across museum and tertiary sectors in Sydney,
specialising in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage, specifically focusing on
community-based cultural resurgence projects and incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing
into museum practice. She is a PhD student at the University of Sydney in the Department of
Sociology & Social Policy, and also works as the Indigenous Collections Repatriation Officer at
the Australian Museum in Sydney. Her thesis is tentatively titled Vessels of Culture, Identity
and Knowledge: From displacement to emplacement through the resurgence of Aboriginal
tied-bark canoe making practice in South-East Australian Indigenous communities.
WENDY SOMERVILLE is a Yuin woman from the south coast of New South Wales. She is a PhD
candidate at the University of Canberra in the Faculty of Arts and Design. Her doctoral thesis
is entitled, Rummaging for histories through archives, memories and places.
PETER WHITE is Senior Curator, Indigenous Connections, at the National Film and Sound
Archive in Canberra. Peter has forged a career within the creative and cultural heritage sector
over the past 25 years with roles at the National Gallery of Australia, where he was the
Manager, Wesfarmers Arts Indigenous programs from 2010, and as the Senior Indigenous
Cultural Development Officer at Arts NSW, where he lead the development of the NSW
Aboriginal Arts and Cultural Strategy. Peter has also acted as a consultant specialising in
Aboriginal arts and cultural development and spent his early career at the Australian Museum
as the Aboriginal Heritage Officer. A proud Murri from the Gamilaroi nation originally hailing
from Tamworth, Peter draws on his experiences to develop and manage a wide scope of
strategies and projects ranging from culturally complex and sensitive programs such as
repatriation of ancestral remains and secret scared material to art and cultural programs
focused on community engagement, economic sustainability and viability and cultural and
social impact.
MICHAEL WOOD is an anthropologist who works mainly in the Western Province, and
occasionally, in other parts of Papua New Guinea. He has also spent time working for land
councils in the Northern Territory and north Queensland. His interest in artefacts started back
in the 1980s when he collected Kamula artefacts for the PNG Museum, and this collection was
redefined when much of it was painted red by some enthusiastic staff of the Gogodala
Cultural Centre. Wood’s most recent research on collections has focused on those made by
Ursula McConnel and Norman Tindale at Yarrabah in north Queensland.