Current Researchers

School of Botany and Zoology
ANU CANBERRA ACT 0200
Located at NARU from September to December 2006 inclusive.
Tel: 02-6125-5481

Patricia Backwell is a biologist working on the behavioural ecology of fiddler crabs. These are small, brightly coloured animals that live in mangrove forests. Male fiddler crabs are interesting because they have a single hugely enlarged claw that they wave to attract females for mating. They also use the claw as a weapon when fighting other males for territories. Pat studies the social behaviour of these crabs, with special emphasis on mating, fighting and signalling. Pat, along with a number of students, will spend four months each year for the next few years studying the fiddler crabs in the Territory.

• School of Botany and Zoology
• Personal page

PhD scholar – Public Policy
History Program
Research School of Social Sciences
ANU CANBERRA ACT 0200
Located at NARU from February 2007
Tel: 08 - 8920-9978

Elizabeth Ganter’s academic background is in social anthropology and public sector management. She is on leave without pay from the Northern Territory Government to conduct her PhD research, which is supported by a scholarship from the Desert Knowledge CRC. Her project is associated with DK-CRC’s Core Project 5: Desert Services That Work, although it is focussed on the Northern Territory as a whole. Her supervisor is Dr Tim Rowse, Head of the History program at ANU’s Research School of Social Sciences.

Elizabeth’s research is about the relationship between the Northern Territory Government and its senior Aboriginal officials. She is asking: how compelling for these officials is the Northern Territory Government’s self-account as an increasingly representative bureaucracy? She is conducting an interview-based and documentary study with a historical focus on the periods before and since the 2001 change to a Labor Government. She is based at NARU to conduct her field research during 2007.

PhD scholar - Anthropology
Charles Darwin University
Telephone: 0403 546 494
Postal: GPO Box 3155, DARWIN NT 0801

Bill’s PhD is on Indigenous governance, leadership and succession, in particular in the region known as Thamarrurr (also referred to as Port Keats) in the north west of the Northern Territory. He is utilizing an action research methodology that involves workshops, planning techniques, and interviews, to explore what was there prior to non-Aboriginal settlement, how things have changed, what is there today, and the possibility of appropriate cultural match with other governance arrangements. Bill’s PhD studies are thanks to a collaborative arrangement between the Charles Darwin University and CAEPR, the Australian National University. The studies will hopefully contribute to the Reconciliation Australia, CAEPR, ANU research umbrella project for Indigenous governance.

• Charles Darwin University
• CAEPR

ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
ANU CANBERRA ACT 0200

Located at the North Australia Research Unit

Thesis title: Ethnography of the Yan-nhangu of Mooroongga (Murrungga) and the Crocodile Islands.

Bentley James, cultural and linguistic anthropologist, lived on the Crocodile Islands for ten years in which time he investigated the language, local organization, ceremonial life and recent Archeological pre-history of the people of the islands. In 2003 he published the first Yan-nhangu dictionary and has since been working on a number of projects to related to Yan-nhangu Indigenous marine knowledge. Previously Bentley James lived and worked in the Warlpiri speaking community of Yuendumu in the Tanami Desert for four years with the Warlpiri Media Association making indigenous language programs.

• School of Anthropology and Archaeology

Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute (ADSRI)
Australian National University

North Australian Research Unit (NARU)
Tel: 08 8920 9978

Kim is a PhD student enrolled at ADSRI as a distance student based in Darwin. Her research is focused on Indigenous fertility change in the Northern Territory, with a particular focus on the past 20 years - a period for which births registration and hospital data have been collected by Indigenous status. The research has two key stages. First, a technical analysis of existing population data, with a particular focus on identifying trends and spatial differences in fertility. Arising from the analysis in the first stage, a second stage will determine research questions as to why the identified trends are taking place, and determine the feasibility of developing a methodology to address these research questions.

Kim’s supervisors are Rebecca Kippen (ADSRI) and John Taylor (CAEPR). The research began in August 2007, and is supported by an ANU PhD scholarship.

President, World Archaeological Congress, Department of
Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide

Tel: (08) 8201 2336

Claire Smith is conducting ARC and AIATSIS funded research in the Barunga and Gubulanya regions, on relationships to land, and on cultural and intellectual property issues, and enclose an outline of our project, in the format required by the NLC for permit applications. The principal researchers for this project are Claire Smith, Gary Jackson, Jane Balme, Heather Burke, Michael Wilmore, Ines Domingo Sanz and Sally May.

This research integrates archaeological, documentary and oral evidence to investigate the dynamic relationships between Indigenous people and place over time in the Barunga-Wugularr region, Australia. By mapping the active construction of social landscapes by different groups in the same place, this project illuminates the webs of attachment between people, place and identity during periods of upheaval and change. It records Indigenous histories being lost on a regular basis, contributes to national reconciliation through enhancing understandings of shared histories and advances international debates about the nature of social significance and how best to assess this for Indigenous places.

The broad aim of this project is to understand how Indigenous relationships to place in the Barunga region of northern Australia have changed since European settlement. There are two interrelated parts to this project:

• To investigate how people living in this part of Jawoyn country maintain their relationship to place in periods of rapid social change.
• To investigate and map long term change and continuity in the Indigenous occupation of this area.

The specific aims of this project are to investigate the social dynamics that have created the overlapping social landscapes of the Barunga region.