Professor Ann McGrath heading to Princeton

Professor Ann McGrath heading to Princeton
Thursday 7 March 2013

Professor Ann McGrath, OAM, FASSA, Director of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the ANU, will become a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, for the US academic year 2013-14. She will be based at the School of Social Sciences and, along with a group of twenty international scholars, will participate in its annual theme - 'The Environmental Turn and the Human Sciences'. This will be led by the ground-breaking historian, Joan Wallach Scott and anthropologist and sociologist Didier Fassin.

Ann’s research project is to write a book on the topic 'Lady Mungo and the Re-enchantment of Deep Time'. Adopting a trans-temporal approach, her work will juxtapose the story of a woman who lived in Australia at least 40,000 years ago with the story of her 'afterlife', that is, the many happenings since her remains were found in the sand hills surrounding the dry lakes of the Willandra Lakes District of New South Wales, Australia, in 1968.

Building upon research from her ARC funded project, she will consider how historians, scientists and Aboriginal Australians have created 'kinship' relations that connect them with people of the deep past. By reflecting upon the 'inspirited landscape' of Lake Mungo, her book will examine how cross-cultural and transdisciplinary approaches might open up new ways of approaching and understanding a history of deep time.

Ann has published widely on the history of gender and colonialism in Australia and North America, and currently holds three ARC funded projects. She is researching two projects on Australia's deep past, including the Lake Mungo project, and ‘Deepening Histories of Place’, a large digital history project that aims to develop new ways of researching and delivering histories in World Heritage areas. She is soon to start work on another ARC Industry project, Serving our country: a history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the defence of Australia. She holds an Honorary Doctorate at Linneaus University in Sweden, has advised various government enquiries and has served as an expert witness in a number of court hearings into land rights, native title and the stolen generations. Her most recent book was with Ann Curthoys, entitled, How to write history that people want to read (Palgrave, New York, 2011).

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Australian Centre for Indigenous History

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