Professor Lynette Russell
ARC Professorial Fellow 2011-2016
Director, Faculty of Arts Monash Indigenous Centre (MIC)
View contact details in Monash Staff Directory
I describe all of my research as broadly anthropological- history. I have published widely in the areas of theory, Indigenous histories, post-colonialism and representations of race, museum studies and popular culture. In 2010 I was awarded a five year ARC Professorial Fellowship (with my colleague Dr Leigh Boucher, Macquarie University) to undertake a study of Victorian Ethnographers 1834-1930.
The driving force in all of my research is an exploration of the sociology (and socio-politics) of knowledge. In short I aspire to understand not merely the past but how we come to know the past, how we describe, categorise, interpret and analyse it.
Teaching
I co-teach honours coursework units.
Postgraduate supervision
I am very serious about the importance of supervision and the postgraduate research process. I currently supervise a number of PhD and masters students in a range of areas. These include: Indigenous knowledge systems, Aboriginal History, Torres Strait islands settlement history, Australian archaeology and ethics of research and Indigenous education.
As a guiding principal I believe that it is a privilege to be allowed to work with ATSI people and materials. It is for that reason that I believe it is important to disseminate information in both the popular and academic arenas. I am also committed to the production of non-jargon research reports for Aboriginal communities.
Research projects
Victorian Ethnographers
Arizona Smoki People and the politics of performance
Food, Traditional Aboriginal Knowledge and the Expansion of the Settler Economy
Research publications
Monographs
Roving Mariners: Aboriginal Whalers, in the southern oceans 1790-1870, SUNY Press, New York. (forthcoming 2011).
Power and the Passion Our Ancestors Return Home, Koorie Heritage Trust Press, (Shannon Faulkhead, Jim Berg with Lynette Russell, Ross L. Jones and Jason Eades). 2010.
Boundary Writing: living across the boundaries of sex, race and gender (edited), University of Hawaii Press, 2006.
Appropriated Pasts: Archaeology and Indigenous People in Settler Colonies, AltaMira Press. 2005, with Ian McNiven.
A Little Bird Told Me, Allen and Unwin. 2002.
Colonial Frontiers: Cross-cultural interactions in Settler Colonies (edited), Studies in Imperialism, Manchester University Press. 2001.
Savage Imaginings: historical and contemporary representations of Australian Aboriginalities, Australian Scholarly Publications. 2001.
Constructions of Colonialism: Perspectives on Eliza Fraser's shipwreck,(Edited with Ian McNiven and Kay Schaffer), Leicester University Press. 1998.
Edited Journals
Guest Editor, Special edition of International Journal of Historical Archaeology, on Oral History and Archaeology the tensions and the synergies. (Forthcoming).
Guest Editor (with Sue McKemmish, Melissa Castan, Livia Iacovino), Human Rights, Heritage and Archives, Archival Science. (Forthcoming).
Guest Editor (with John Arnold), Latrobe Journal, entitled: Indigenous Victoria: repressed, resourceful, and respected. 2010, (Spring Edition).
Chapters in Books
"Those Women Were 'Free People': Southern Australian Aboriginal Women and the Early Maritime Industry of Sealing". (ed) Carol Williams, Indigenous Women and Work: Transnational Perspectives, University of Illinois, Chicago. (forthcoming 2011).
"William Lanné’s Pipe: the last Tasmanian" in Indigenous Bodies, ed. J. Fear-Seagal, SUNY Press: New York. (forthcoming 2011).
"Learning from each other, Language, authority and authenticity" in Kate Grenville’s The Lieutenant in Sue Kossew (ed) Lighting Dark Places: Essays on Kate Grenville, Rodolpho Press. (2011).
"Imagined Landscapes: Edges of the (un)known" (eds) David, B. and Thomas, J. Handbook of Landscapes. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California. (2008).
“Towards a postcolonial archaeology of Indigenous Australia”, in C. R. Chippindale and H.D.G. Maschner (eds) Handbook of Archaeological Theories, AltaMira Press. (2008).
"Is Community Research Possible Within the Western Academic Tradition?" (with Shannon Faulkhead, Diane Singh and Sue McKemmish), in Researching With Communities, (edited A. Williamson), Otago University Press. (2008).
“Indigenous knowledge and archives: accessing hidden history and understandings”. Australian Indigenous Knowledge and Libraries. M. Nakata and M. Langton. Kingston, ACT, Australian Academic and Research Libraries (AARL). (2007) 36:2. 2005."The Undecided" in Boundary Writing: living across the boundaries of race, sex and gender University of Hawaii Press (2006): 1-10.
"'Either, Or, Neither Nor' resisting the production of dichotomies; gender race and class in the pre-colonial period" in The Archaeology of Plural and Changing Identities: Beyond Identification, edited by Eleonor Casella and Chris Fowler, Plenum/ Kluwer Press. (2005).
"Ritual response: Rock art, sorcery and ceremony on the Australian colonial frontier", in M. Wilson and B. David (eds) Constructed Landscapes; Rock-Art, Place and Identity. University of Hawaii Press. (2002).
"Dioramas at the Museum of Victoria", in C. Rasmussen (ed.) A History of the Museum of Victoria, Museum Victoria. (2002).
"Archaeology and Star Trek: Exploring the past while investigating the future", in Miles Russell (ed) Archaeology and Science Fiction, pp 20-35. Bournemouth University Press. (2002).
"Gone Walkabout: images of Aboriginal Australia in the 1950s", in Julie Marcus (ed) Picturing the Primitif, pp 195-211, LBR Press. (2000).
"The Wurundjeri of Melbourne and Port Philip", Encyclopaedia of World's Endangered Indigenous People, pp 220-245, Greenwood, New York. 2000 (with Ian McIven)
"Mere Trifles and Faint Representations: the representations of savage life offered by Eliza Fraser", in I. McNiven, L. Russell and K. Schaffer (ed)Constructions of Colonialism: Perspectives on Eliza Fraser's shipwreck, pp 51-63, Leicester University Press. (1998).
“Focusing on the past: visual and textual images of Aboriginal Australia in museums and archaeology ”. In B. Molyneux (ed.)The Cultural Life of Images, pp 230-248, Routledge. (1997).
Journal Articles
“Remembering Places Never Visited: Connections and context in imagined and imaginary landscapes”, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, (Forthcoming)
“Resetting Relationships: Archives and Indigenous Human Rights in Australia” (with Sue McKemmish, Livia Iacovino, Eric Ketelaar and Melissa Castan), Archives and Manuscripts. (forthcoming).
“Dis-trust in the Archive: Reconciling Records”, Archival Science (with Sue McKemmish and Shannon Faulkhead). (Forthcoming 2011)
“‘A New Holland Half-Caste’. The Remarkable Life of Sealer and Whaler Tommy Chaseland: Diaspora, Autonomy and Hybridity”, History Australia. vol5, no.1, Apr (2008): 08.1-08.15.
“‘Whiteness’ and ‘Aboriginality’ in Canada and Australia: hybrid identities, hybrid genres”, Feminist Theory, Aug (2007); vol. 8: pp. 187 - 208., with Margery Fee.
‘Dirty Domestics and Worse Cooks’: Aboriginal Women’s Agency and Domestic Frontiers, Southern Australia 1800–1850, Frontiers: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol 28 (2007), (1&2): 18-47.
Indigenous Records and Archives: Mutual Obligations and Building Trust. Archives and Manuscripts: the Journal of the Australian Society of Archivists, Vol 34(1):32-43. 2006, republished in 2007 in Made Kept and Used: Celebrating 30 years of the Australian Society of Archivists."Kangaroo Island Sealers and their descendants: ethnic and gender ambiguities in the archaeology of a creolised community", Australian Archaeology, Vol 60: 1-5. 2005.
"Indigenous Community Aspirations-Heritage, Education and the Possibility of Self-Determination", The Artefact, Vol 27: 23-30. 2004.
"Drinking from a pen holder: Can archaeology recover past intentions?"Cambridge Archaeological Journal:63-67. 2004.
"Public Records Private Life: The Story of One Aboriginal Woman And Her Journey From Non-Citizen To Citizen". Australian Women in University's e-journa, 2003.
"The Instrument Brings on Voices: life story narratives and family history", Meanjin, pp 145-152, Vol 60(3). 2001.
"Bunjilaka Brooding", Meanjin Vol.60(4):99-103. 2001.
"Where is the Past? Locating archaeological discourses and narratives in the Melbourne Museum", The Artefact. Vol. 23 pp.3-8. 2000.
"Those wonderful creatures that they had captured": reading the exhibition of the Australian Wild-children, Journal of Australian Studies, 2001, 70(1), 57-62.
"Beyond the Final Frontier: Star Trek, the Borg and the Post-colonial", in Intensities: Journal of cult studies, Vol 1(1) 2001, pp 10-24.
"Well nigh impossible to describe": dioramas, displays and representations of Australian Aborigines. Australian Aboriginal Studies. 1999 (2), pp25-34.
Monumental Colonialism: megaliths and the appropriation of Australia's Aboriginal past, Journal of Material Culture, Vol 3(3):283-301. (with Ian McNiven). 1998
A Question of Violence. Arena (37): 20. 1998
"Strange paintings" and "mystery races": Kimberley rock-art, diffusionism and colonialist constructions of Australia's Aboriginal past, Antiquity 71:801-809. (with Ian McNiven). 1997
Going Walkabout in the 1950's: Images of 'traditional' Aboriginal Australia, Olive Pink Society Bulletin, Vol 6(1): 5-8. 1995
Place With A Past: Reconciling Wilderness And The Aboriginal Past In World Heritage Areas, Royal Historical Society of Queensland Journal, Vol 15(11): 505-519. (with I. McNiven). 1995
Australian Aborigines: New perceptions and altered states, Current Anthropology, Vol 35(2): 202-205. 1995
Current Research Interests and Areas of Supervision
Nineteenth Century ‘race’ relations in Australia and New Zealand.
Historical Anthropology.
Appropriation and identity.
Comparative epistemologies, and cultural constructions of knowledge and knowledge production.
Gender and the relationship between gender and ‘race’.
Interdisciplinary Research, especially the nexus between anthropology, archaeology and history.
Partnership Approaches to research.
Indigenous Oral History and narrative construction.
Museums, material culture, museum collections and exhibitions.
