Andrea is a Post Doctoral Fellow in Digital Cultures and Societies at the University of Queensland . She got her PhD at USC Annenberg, and is originally from Colombia. Broadly, her research interests lie at the intersection of media and Science and Technology Studies.She studies mobilities; cultures of transnational, remote work; on-demand workers and freelancers; feminized maintenance of workspaces; media tales of tech; civic social media in Latin America.
Her research can be found in New Media and Society, the International Journal of Communication, Mass Communication & Society, and in the edited volume Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: A Casebook. She has also conducted research with the IDRC and USAID in projects about the "future of work" in the "Global South".
I am a sociocultural anthropologist in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland and current (2021-present) Director of the Master of Development Practice program. My research is focussed on the social and cultural dimensions of ecological and economic change, especially that driven by the extractives industry and experienced by Indigenous Peoples. Current research is engaged in the epistemological, political and practical problems of 'seeing' harms from large scale mining projects, especially lithium in the 'critical minerals' extraction boom (see a recent FILM made with research collaborators), and in relation to groundwater and associated community futures. Ethnographic methodologies and theory that rely on sustained, engaged, and ethical relationships characterise my practice in Australia and Chile and resulting publications.
I design courses for and teach in the undergraduate major in anthropology, as well as for multidisciplinary areas of teaching in theory and methodology for Humanities and Social Science Faculty Honours students and in program design for the Development Practice students. HDR students from anthropology and other social science backgrounds undertake research under my supervision on questions associated with ecological futures, especially water, but also territorial relations, and in areas of political anthropology, and decolonial and feminist theory and method.
A/Prof Steve Bell is a senior social scientist at the Burnet Institute and has 22 years’ experience across South-East Asia (India, Nepal), Africa (Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe) and Western Pacific (Australia, Indonesia, PNG, Fiji) Regions. He works respectfully with not-for-profits, public institutions, businesses and community organisations, using innovative, inclusive, people-centred approaches to identify sustainable solutions to critical health challenges and accelerate health equity.
Steve’s work brings together lived experience, socio-ecological systems thinking and social theory to understand what works (or not) in global health and social development. He has researched and published widely on HIV, sexual and reproductive health, maternal health, neglected tropical diseases, TB and Indigenous health. He is particularly interested in understanding the socio-structural determinants of health and social inequities, and injustices associated with marginalisation due to gender, sexuality, age and geography. He has also published two books on interpretive and community-led approaches in research, design, monitoring and evaluation: ‘Peer research in health and social development: international perspectives on participatory research’ (2021), and ‘Monitoring and evaluation in health and social development: interpretive and ethnographic perspectives’ (2016). He is currently taking on new PhD students in these areas, so please do reach out to him at the Burnet Institute for a chat!
He holds associate professorial appointments at UNSW Sydney and The University of Queensland, is a Member of the International Editorial Board at Culture, Health & Sexuality, has been a Senior Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group, and has worked in research and consultancy roles with international governments, NGOs, UNAIDS, UNFPA and WHO.
Rob Cramb is Professor of Agricultural Development. His research interests centre on rural development, agrarian change, and natural resource management in Southeast Asia, focusing on the evolution of farming systems, land tenure arrangements, and community-based resource management in a variety of agro-ecological zones.
He graduated in agricultural economics from the University of Melbourne, then worked in Sarawak, Malaysia, for 6 years with the Department of Agriculture, first as a volunteer with Australian Volunteers International and subsequently as a consultant for the World Bank funded National Extension Project. He then undertook PhD studies at Monash University in development economics and Southeast Asian studies, returning to Sarawak for fieldwork on the evolution of Iban agriculture and customary land tenure. In 1987 he took up a position at the University of Queensland as lecturer in agricultural development. He has coordinated undergraduate and postgraduate programs in agricultural and resource economics and continued to teach and research issues of agricultural development and natural resource management in Southeast Asia in collaboration with colleagues in soil, crop, and animal science. Most recently he has been involved in assessing the impacts on customary landholders and small-scale farmers of the rapid expansion of oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia. He is currently involved in research on developing more inclusive models for smallholder engagement in global commodity chains, using cassava as a case study.
I'm a linguistic anthropologist who studies how communicative events in Indonesia figure in the building and maintenance of social relationships and common knowledge among Indonesians. During my PhD and post-PhD early years my research often involved long periods of fieldwork in Indonesia. As research funding and sabbatical have become scarce, I have increasingly turned to publically available data, such as Indonesian films, newspapers, social media and so on. I have published extensively on my research, including Language, Migration, and Identity: Neighbourhood Talk in Indonesia (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Language and Superdiversity: Indonesians Knowledging at Home and Abroad (Oxford University Press, 2015), Global Leadership Talk: Constructing Good Governance in Indonesia (Oxford University Press, 2020); Reimagining Rapport (Oxford University Press, 2021); Rapport and the discursive co-construction of social relations in fieldwork settings (Mouton De Gruyter, 2019); and Contact Talk: The Discursive Organization of Contact and Boundaries (with Deborah Cole and Howard Manns, Routledge, 2020).
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
Availability:
Not available for supervision
Media expert
Dr Kelly Greenop is a senior lecturer within the School of Architecture and is affiliated with both the Architecture Criticism Theory History (ATCH) and Aboriginal Environments Research Centres (AERC) within the School. Her research has focused on work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in urban Brisbane, using ethnographic techniques to document the place experiences and attachment, and the importance of architecture, place, family and country for urban Indigenous people. She also conducts research into the intercultural place heritage of the Brisbane region, and the urban cultural history of Brisbane’s suburbs.
Kelly's latest research is in Digital Cultural Heritage, utilising 3D laser scanning of heritage environments and buildings in South East Queensland. She has been working with researchers from ATCH, School of Architecture, CSIRO and site managers at Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service to scan and archive fragile, remote and at risk sites, and research the use of scanning in architectural heritage practice.
With colleagues from AERC she has also conducted research into Aboriginal housing, particularly with respect to crowding and homelessness. Kelly’s research has been supported by grants from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), the Queensland Government, the Australian Federal Government and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).
Awards
National Trust (Queensland) John Herbert Memorial Award (best heritage project in the state) for Agency Programs, in collaboration with Queensland Rail, 2018
National Trust (Queensland) Gold Award for Agency Programs, in collaboration with Queensland Rail, 2018
Queensland Premier’s Sustainability Awards for Heritage: ‘Highly Commended’ for Moreton Bay Digital Cultural Heritage Projects, 2014
Best Paper, Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand Conference, 2013
Memberships
Member, International Association for People Environment Studies (IAPS)
Member, Society of Architectural Historians (US)
Member, Society of Architectural Historians Australia New Zealand (SAHANZ)
Member, Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA)
Member, Association of Critical Heritage Studies Member (Appointed), Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
Gerhard has a BA in Social Anthropology and Politics/International Relations and an MA in Social Anthropology from the University of Kent at Canterbury and was awarded a PhD in anthropology and sociology from La Trobe University. From 2014-2017 he was an Australian Research Council DECRA research fellow. In 2023-2024 he is the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia 2024 spending time at the National University of Singapore and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.
He conducts research in development studies, on refugee and immigration policy and spiritual and existential security as well as religion and the state. He is a regular commentator in newspapers, radio and online media on topics of his research.
His first book entitled Modern Muslim Identities: Negotiating Religion and Ethnicity in Malaysia is published by NIAS Press. He is co-editor of a volume on human security and Australian foreign policy published by Allen and Unwin/Routledge as well as one on Urban refugees: Challenges in Protection, Services and Policy, published by Routledge.
He is a senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is also course director for World101x: Anthropology of current world issues, UQs fifth edX massive open online course. The course offers 9 weeks of anthropological episodes with an array of additional resources, including a host of interviews with fellow anthropologists. There is also a curated list of interviews with anthropologists and panels on the youtube and facebook channel.
Karen is a Professor in Development Geography in the School of the Environment. She is ultimately interested in how people experience and can improve their capacities to respond to the triple crises of poverty, disaster risk, and climate change. Over the last 20 years, Karen has been undertaking applied research in resilient livelihoods, non-economic loss and damage, community-based adaptation, human mobility, and gender, in close partnership with governments and NGOs throughout the Asia-Pacific region. For example, Karen has worked with farmers in Aceh as they rebuilt their livelihoods following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, with newly-settled migrants in Dhaka (Bangladesh) forced from their rural homelands due to flooding and erosion, with Elders in the Torres Strait recording their traditional environmental knowledge, and with several rural communities throughout the Pacific Islands region, documenting their everyday stories of climate impacts, adaptation, and loss and damage.
Karen has advised several governments and international organisations on adaptation, loss and damage, mobility, and gender. She is currently a member of the Expert Group on Non-Economic Losses for the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (United Nations Climate Change Secretariat). Karen's recent advances have included a world-first conceptualisation of loss and damage across the Pacific Islands (ARC Future Fellowship), an understanding of how climate change is violating people’s human rights (Vanuatu Government), the identification of optimisation points to improve adaptation outcomes (ARC Linkage), and strategies for supporting women in disaster recovery (UN Women).
Karen has managed 27 research and capacity building grants as lead or named CI worth >$6.4 million for the ARC, Australian Government, DFAT, National Geographic, OECD, Scope Global, UNDP, and others. She has published over 120 papers and book chapters, and over 80 reports, online commentaries, and policy briefs. Karen has supervised 14 PhD students to completion (9 as Principal) who have gone onto exciting roles in universities, government, the UN, and consultancy firms. She is currently supervising five PhD students, and teaches core courses into the environmental management and planning programs.
Karen proudly comes from the small town of Quirindi, which is Kamilaroi Country, on the Liverpool Plains in NSW. Growing up in a small, close-knit country town sparked Karen's interest in social, development, and environmental issues in rural communities.
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
Availability:
Available for supervision
Media expert
Professor Paul Memmott is an anthropologist and architect and for some decades was the Director of the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre at the University of Queensland (School of Architecture and Institute for Social Science Research). This has now become the Aboriginal Environments Research Collaborative (AERC) within the School of Architecture, Design and Planning. The AERC has provided and continues to provide an applied research focus on a range of topics in relation to Indigenous populations, including institutional architecture, vernacular architecture, housing, crowding, governance, well-being, homelessness, family violence and social planning for communities.
Paul was the first full-time architectural-anthropological consultant in Australia, being principal of a research consultancy practice in Aboriginal projects during 1980 to 2008. His research interests encompass Aboriginal sustainable housing and settlement design, Aboriginal access to institutional architecture, Indigenous constructs of place and cultural heritage, vernacular architecture, social planning in Indigenous communities, cultural change and architectural anthropology.
Paul’s scholarly research output includes over 300 publications (including 11 books and monographs), 215 applied research reports and 40 competitive grants. He has supervised over 50 postgraduate and honours students and has won a number of prestigious teaching awards in Indigenous education (including an Australian Award for University Teaching – AAUT). One of his books, titled 'Gunyah, Goondie + Wurley: Aboriginal Architecture of Australia', received three national book awards in 2008 (Edition 1), including the prestigious Stanner Award from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, and then upon the publication of an expanded edition 2 in 2022, another three national book awards.
Paul also has extensive professional anthropological experience in Aboriginal land rights claims, Native Title claims and associated court work since 1980. He has presented evidence and been examined in a variety of Australian courts as an expert witness on a cross-section of Indigenous issues, in addition to the Native Title work.
Awards
AIA Neville Quarry Award, 2015
Best Exhibit, Australian Architectural Exhibit, Venice Biennale 2018 (Team led by Baracco + Wright Architects, Melbourne)
Memberships
Life Member, Academy of Social Sciences (Australia)
I'm a biological anthropologist specialising in bone histology of humans and other mammals. I work with modern, archaeological, and palaeontological samples. I have been an Honorary Senior Lecturer at UQ since 2021, a Correspondent Researcher at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden (The Netherlands) since 2022, and an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Kent in Canterbury (UK) since 2016. I have >60 publications and have secured ~$1.6 million in grants as a PI, including a 2019–2022 ARC DECRA (DE190100068) and 2025–2028 ARC Future Fellowship (FT240100030). As a CI/AI, I have featured on ~$1.7 million worth of grants, including a 2023–2027 ARC DP (DP230100440).
In 2022 I was a Martin & Temminck Fellow at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in The Netherlands. Until 2022, I spent almost 7 years at the Australian National University in Canberra working as an ARC DECRA Fellow (2019–2022), Senior Lecturer, and Lecturer. Between 2015 and 2016 I was a Research Assistant in medicine at Imperial College in London. Until 2014, I spent about 8 years at the University of Kent in Canterbury completing a BSc (2010), PhD (2014), and PGCHE (2014), and working in various teaching roles, including tutoring, lab demonstration, sessional lecturing, and lecturing. I was previously Treasurer of the Australasian Society for Human Biology, Editor (2022) and Associate Editor (2023) of The Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, and Editorial Board Member (2022–2024) of Scientific Reports. I am currently Editorial Board Member of Anthropological Review and Review Editor (2023) of Human Bioarchaeology and Paleopathology (Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology).
I am a cultural anthropologist with expertise in gender, racism, medical anthropology, and critical global health. I have conducted extensive ethnographic research in Indonesia on health care, gendered violence, education, and racial stigma. The main focus of my research is Papua/West Papua, where my work has tried to document and understand evolving forms of racism and violence, including how people resist and create change. Over the past 15 years I have worked with local Papuan and international research teams on studies of violence, older women's life stories, HIV/AIDS, hospital birth, and health vulnerabilities. My research aims to develop knowledge of the nuances and complexities of conditions and experiences in West Papua, while also working with Papuan scholars and community members to address pressing health and social problems.
I recently completed a study with Els Tieneke Rieke Katmo and Meki Wetipo on how urban Papuans today understand and experience pregnancy and childbirth and how hospital childbirth may be creating more distrust in the health system rather than improving maternal health (2023, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology), published as part of a special issue on 'Reproducing Life in Conditions of Abandonment in Oceania', edited with Sandra Widmer. Another recent multi-sited study looks at vulnerabilities in Indonesia with Professor Lyn Parker (University of Western Australia) and others from the UK and Indonesia. The study used ethnography and surveys to develop a deeper, contextual understanding of who is vulnerable, how and why, and thus shed light on the concept of vulnerability and what it means. Forthcoming publications look at education in Indonesia's frontier economy, older women’s narratives of economic agency and survivance (co-authored with Yohana Baransano), and the challenges faced by newlyweds.
I am expanding my research with older Papuan women on their experiences of the late Dutch and early Indonesian era and their narratives of survivance to include Papuan women from different cultural backgrounds and urban/rural locations. Papuan women's stories and historical experiences are largely missing from public view but are needed to understand their important contributions to society and their roles in creating the future. I am also expanding my research on obstetrics and c-sections to understand the cultures of maternity care in Indonesia, both in terms of local cultural needs and preferences, and in relation to the cultures of medicine and obstetrics that exist in hospitals and birth centres. This will help us to understand how to create respectful maternity care in different cultural contexts, including in Australia. Related to this, I recently completed an action research project funded by the Australia Indonesia Institute (with Els Katmo) on co-designing cultural approaches to sexual and reproductive health, including HIV prevention, in West Papua.
Some recent publications that illustrate key themes of my research:
Jenny Munro, Els Tieneke Rieke Katmo & Meki Wetipo (2022) Hospital Births and Frontier Obstetrics in Urban West Papua, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 23:4-5, 388-406, DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2022.211512
Jenny Munro & Yohana Baransano (2023), From saving to survivance: Rethinking Indigenous Papuan women's vulnerabilities in Jayapura, Indonesia. Asia Pacific Viewpoint https://doi.org/10.1111/apv.12367
Jenny Munro, Lyn Parker, and Yohana Baransano. "There's Money but No Work": Diploma Disruptions in Urban Papua. The Contemporary Pacific 33, no. 2 (2021): 364-384.
Jenny Munro (2020) Global HIV Interventions and Technocratic Racism in a West Papuan NGO, Medical Anthropology, 39:8, 704-719, DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2020.1739036
Jenny Munro. (2020), ‘Saving our people’: health workers, medical citizenship, and vernacular sovereignties in West Papua. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 26: 633-651. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13318
I am an experienced PhD supervisor in medical anthropology and gender studies. I am particularly interested in working with candidates who wish to study gender, health, or racism in (or in relation to) West Papua using anthropological, ethnographic and qualitative approaches. Research projects I have supervised include:
Intersectionality in Australian domestic violence services
Changing masculinities in Uzbekistan
Gender and education in Enga province, Papua New Guinea
Australian spiritual healing
Household meat practices in Indonesia and Australia
Women’s empowerment and energy in South Africa
Health of Pacific seasonal workers in Queensland Australia
Carers’ experiences with medicinal cannabis
Apitherapy in Australia
I teach undergraduate and postgraduate courses on medical anthropology (ANTH2250/7250) and Pacific anthropology (ANTH2020). I also supervise Honours students and co-coordinate HHSS6002 (Honours coursework).
Dr Stefanie Plage is a Research Fellow with the Life Course Centre at the School of Social Science at UQ. Her expertise is in qualitative research methods, including longitudinal and visual methods. Her research interests span the sociology of emotions, disadvantage and health and illness. Stefanie has taught introductory and advanced courses in sociology and medical sociology, research design and qualitative inquiry, including the use of software for qualitative research (i.e. NVivo). Her work is multi-disciplinary. She completed her PhD at the Centre for Social Research in Health at The University of New South Wales. In her study she employed a mix of longitudinal qualitative interviews and visual elicitation methods to explore the lived experience of people with cancer. Currently, her research seeks to understand and improve the interactions of families experiencing social disadvantage with the social and health care systems.
Dr. Maram Shaweesh's is a qualitative researcher. Her interdisciplinary research spans several humanities and spatial disciplines, including architecture, housing adequacy, migration, multiculturalism, everyday encounters in the Australian suburb, urban design, and young people's experiences in urban spaces.
Maram has conducted various research projects focused on housing. For instance, she investigated everyday life in suburban housing as experienced by the Australian Lebanese community. This research utilised social qualitative research methods to explore the relationship between housing design and policy, and the social and cultural context in Australia, such as changing family ideals, household composition, children's wellbeing, parenting values, and social marginalisation. Additionally, Maram has experience working with remote Indigenous communities, having contributed to the "Gunana Futures" research project investigating housing adequacy in Mornington Island.
Maram was also involved in the team working on the Growing Up in Logan project as part of Growing Up in Cities. Collaborating with Logan City Council (CityStudio) and Beenleigh State High School, the project aims to understand adolescents' perceptions of urban space to better comprehend how local environments impact their everyday lives.
As part of her role at the UQ Institute for Social Science Research, Maram worked across several externally and internally funded projects, including Foundation Partner for a National Centre for Place-Based Collaboration (Nexus Centre for place-based collaboration); Targeted Review of Student Equity in Higher Education Programs and System Level Policy Levers; Social Isolation and Loneliness - Research, Analysis and Best Practice; SMBI Community Intiative - Learning by doing; Empowered Communities Partnership Lessons Learned Project; Place-based Approaches to Road Safety; and, Sharing with Friends (co-housing model for older women in Australia).
David Trigger works on the different meanings attributed to land and nature across diverse sectors of society and in different countries. His research encompasses academic studies of how land and sense of place inform the cultural identities of citizens with diverse ancestries. His research is mostly focused on Australian society. In Australian Aboriginal Studies, Professor Trigger has carried out more than 35 years of anthropological study on Indigenous systems of land tenure, including applied research on resource development negotiations and native title claims. In collaboration with colleagues he has in recent years sought understanding of the overlaps and divergences of senses of place among those with Euro-Australian, Asian and Aboriginal ancestries. This work includes projects focused on a comparison of pro-development, environmentalist and Aboriginal perspectives on land and nature. Of particular interest are the issues of ‘nativeness’ and ‘invasiveness’ as understood in both nature and society, with implications for issues of land, cultural identity and environmental management.
Mair Underwood is an anthropologist in the School of Social Science who specialises in bodies. In particular she explores how body modifications (such as tattoo or bodybuilding) are used to create, reflect and disrupt social boundaries such as those of gender and class. She is especially interested in the social lives of image and performance enhancing drugs: how they acquire meaning through social interactions and how they alter social interactions.
She also has an interest in assessment practice and has conducted research into assessment techniques that promote student engagement and academic integrity and compiled them into a searchable database called the UQ Assessment Ideas Factory
Mair is passionate about community engagement and engages with the community through her YouTube profile and podcasts such as this one with VPA Australia https://www.vpa.com.au/podcast
Mair Underwood coordinates two courses:
SOSC2190 Human Bodies, Culture and Society
SOCY1060 Gender, Sexuality and Society: An Introduction
My research is at the inter-section of cultural anthropology- material and visual culture- and museum studies with specialisms in the anthropology of art and design, and the 21st century 'ethnographic' museum. I research and publish on the role of colours as carriers of thought in art and in everyday creative design practices, and colours as local ecology and time. My additonal current research include Australian Indigenous art and the market; the role of museum management in institutional policy and history; digital imaging of museum objects and intellectual property; collection ecologies and bio-cultural materials; research led exhibtiions and contemporary exhibition curation and design. I have a long-standing association with the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands (APY Lands) in South Australia where I carried out my doctoral fieldwork whilst a student at University College London, as part of the material culture group. I welcome doctoral students who wish to work on material and visual cultural research and musuem studies, or the interesction of these.
I have curated a number of research generated exhibitions including consultant curator for the 50th anniversary show of Ernabella Arts at Tandanya in South Australia, the retrospective of Kunmanara (Nyukana) Baker and, co-curated the touring show Art on a String with Object, and fifteen collaborative shows for the UQ Anthropology Museum.
I have directed the Master of Museum studies program at UQ for the last 5 years, commissioning a course in digital heritage and carrying out and implementing the recommendations of the academic program review. I continue to partner with GLAMs sector institutions for teaching and research. I am partnering with QAGOMA to collaborate on a new course about Learning and Outreach. I have taught Museum Theory and Practice, Collections, Museum Management, Exhibitions, Work Placement and convened the Masters Dissertation courses. Previously I taught Material and Visual culture and Museum Anthropology in the UQ Anthropology undergraduate program. I have taught at the Australian National University, Chelsea College of Art and University College London in the UK. I was first trained as an architect and worked in the UK construction industry as a designer and project manager.
As the first women to direct the UQ Anthropology Museum in its 75-year history I aimed to promote the work of women makers and artists in the museum’s collection and in the museum’s exhibition program. I am skilled at combining theory and practice, including teaching with objects, and at infrastructure implementation. I led the re configuring of the UQ Anthropology museum’s infrastructure transforming it back into a public institution with a rolling exhibition program generated by research of the museum’s collection. I led the creation of the first online publication of the collection to enable wide collection access. This included a purpose built digital catalogue and the creation and upload of more than 15,000 images of the cultural property cared for in the museum. The publication of the photographic collection in 2017 enabled these images can find new friends and family online. More than 60,000 people visited the UQAM’s new teaching, research and engagement facilities between 2012-2017. I raised more than AUS$1.1 million for the museum.
