Painting of Skeleton Point, Flinders River,
I have an ongoing research interest in the theft and scientific uses of the bodily remains of Indigenous peoples in contexts of settler colonial colonialism. My 2017-18 book, Science, Museums and Collecting the Indigenous Dead in Colonial Australia explains how and why skulls and other bodily structures of Indigenous Australians became the focus of scientific curiosity about the nature and origins of human diversity from the early years of colonisation in the late eighteenth century to Australia achieving nationhood at the turn of the twentieth century. The last thirty years have seen the world’s indigenous peoples seek the return of their ancestors' bodily remains from museums and medical schools throughout the Western world. In the book, I explore how the remains of the continent’s first inhabitants were collected during the long nineteenth century by the plundering of their traditional burial places. He also explores the question of whether museums also acquired the bones of men and women who were killed in Australian frontier regions by military, armed police and settlers.
I am currently researching and writing about craniometry during the long nineteenth century.
