Publications | Paul Turnbull

Print-based publications

Monographs

Turnbull, P. 2017, Science, Museums and Collecting the Indigenous Dead in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Macmillan, Springer International Publishing, Cham, Switzerland, XIII, 428 pp. ISBN 978-3-319-51873-2.

Edited books

Turnbull, P., Pickering, M. (eds) 2010, The Long Way Home: the Meanings and Values of Repatriation of Human Remains, Berghahn Books, Oxford and New York. 270 pp. ISBN 9781845459581.
Fforde, C. Hubert, J. and Turnbull, P. (eds), The Dead and their Possessions. Repatriation in Principle, Policy and Practice, Routledge London and New York. 360 pp. ISBN 9780415344494.

Research-based online digital projects

2020 – ongoing: Dalton Guide to Sources in North Queensland History, https://www.paulturnbull.org/dalton/ Comprises over 14,000 descriptive references to sources in North Queensland History. Collaboration with Royal Queensland Historical Society.
2020- ongoing: Informatics and Infrastructure support for Moore, C. The Solomon Islands Historical Encyclopaedia, 1893-1978, https://www.solomonencyclopaedia.net
2019- ongoing: with Fforde, C. Adams, W., Return, Reconcile, Renew: Online Resources for Repatriation, https://returnreconcilerenew.info/ ARC LIEF Funded.
2014-5: with R. Nayak and S. Kutty,et. al., PaperMiner V.1, 2014-5. href="https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqy084" Funded by UQ Faculty of Arts Innovation Grant.
2004 – ongoing: South Seas: Pacific Voyaging and Cross-cultural Encounters 1760-1832, version 1.0 , http://southseas.nla.gov.au ARC Linkage funded: online since 2004; Version 2.0 (online since 2022) https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/ Includes new digital edition of James Cook’s manuscript journal and over 200 contextual essays and commentaries on Cook’s momentous first Pacific voyage.

Refereed book chapters

2025, 'Disciplines', in Ellis H (Editor), Pietsch T (Editor), A Cultural History of Higher Learning, vol. 5, London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 101-117.
2024. ‘Born of Spiritual Obligation: Australian First Nations and the Repatriation of the Ancestral Dead’, Foerster, L. Huegens, J., eds., The Long History of Claims for the Return of Cultural Heritage from Colonial Contexts. Berlin De Gruyter. In Press.
2024. ‘Disciplinary Formation: The Example of Anthropology’, History of Higher Learning: The Nineteenth-Century, Bloomsbury Publishers, London. In press.
2024. ‘Restoring Dignity. The Ethical and Technical Challenges of Creating Digital Resources for the Repatriation of Indigenous Australian Ancestral Remains’, in Afeld, S. and Wergins, C., eds., Digitizing Heritage, Heidelberg University Press, pp. 29-45.
2023. with Fforde C, Roginski A, Goodman A, Howes H, ‘Craniometry and Indigenous Repatriation’ in in Fforde, C., Howes, H., Knapman, G., Ormond-Parker, L., eds,. Science, Repatriation and Identity. Routledge, London, pp. 74-96.
2023. with Howes H, Knapman G, Winkelmann A, Fforde C, Turnbull P, ‘Explanations of failure: Identifying racial logic, scientific authority, and notions of authenticity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’, in Fforde, C., Howes, H., Knapman, G., Ormond-Parker, L., eds., Science, Repatriation and Identity. Routledge, London, pp. 127-143.
2023. ‘Surveying Craniometry’, in Fforde, C., Howes, H., Knapman, G., Ormond-Parker, L., eds., Science, Repatriation and Identity. Routledge, London, 51-73.
2022. ‘Infrastructure for Historical Research in Australia’, in Ashton, P., Hamilton, P., The Australian History Industry, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 106-117.
2022. ‘Museums, Colonialism and the Indigenous Ancestral Dead’, in Fackler, G. Klotz, T. Menke, S. eds., Mumien und andere menschliche Überreste: ethische Herausforderungen für Forschung und Ausstellung, Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, Wuerzburg, pp. 200-210.
2020: ‘International Repatriations of Indigenous Human Remains and Its Complexities: the Australian Experience’, Museums and Society. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v18i1.3246.
2022: with Fforde, C., Andrews, J., Halealoha Ayau, E., Grant, M. Smith, L., ‘Emotion and the Return of Ancestors: Repatriation as Affective Practice’, in Stevens, A., The Oxford Handbook of Museum Archaeology, Oxford University Press, pp. Pages 65–C3.P122, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198847526.013.43
2022: with Fforde, C., Andrews, J., Halealoha Ayau, E., Grant, M. Smith, L. ‘Emotion, Affective Practice, and the Taking of Indigenous Ancestral Remains’, in Stevens, A., The Oxford Handbook of Museum Archaeology, Oxford University Press, pp. 45-C.3. 122, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198847526.013.43
2021: 'Remembering Koiki and Bonita Mabo, pioneers of Indigenous education', in G Rodoreda and E Bischoff (ed), Mabo's Cultural Legacy: History, Literature, Film and Cultural Practice in Contemporary Australia, Anthem Press, United Kingdom, pp. 33-45. ISBN 9781785274244.
2021: with Fforde, C. McKeown, T., Keeler, H., Ormond-Parker, L., Tapsell, P., 2021. ‘Identity in Applied Repatriation Research’, in Meloche, C., Spake, L. Nichols, K., Working with and for Ancestors: Collaboration in the Care and Study of Ancestral Remains,, Routledge, London, pp. 255-267.
2020. ‘Collecting and Colonial Violence’ in Fforde, C, McKeown, CT Keeler, H (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew, Routledge, London, pp. 452-468.
2020: with Fforde, C, Turnbull, P, Carter, N Aranui, A.. Missionaries and the Removal, Illegal Export, and Return of Ancestral Remains: The case of Father Ernst Worms’ in Fforde, C, McKeown, CT Keeler, H (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew, Routledge, London, pp. 316-334.
2020: with Knapman, G. Provenance research and historical sources for understanding 19th century scientiﬁc interest in Indigenous human remains: the scholarly journals and popular science media’ in Fforde, C, McKeown, CT Keeler, H (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew, Routledge, London, pp. 564-582.
2020: The Ethics of Repatriation: Reﬂections on the Australian Experience’ in Fforde, C, McKeown, CT Keeler, H (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew, Routledge, London, pp. 927-939
2020: with Fforde, C, Aranui, A, Knapman, G., ‘Inhuman and Very Mischievous Traffic’: Early Measures to Cease the Export of Ancestral Remains from Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia’ in Fforde, C, McKeown, CT Keeler, H (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew, Routledge, London, pp. 318-399.
2020: with Aranui, A, Fforde, C, Pickering, M, Knapman, G. ‘Under The Hammer’, The Role of Auction Houses and Dealers in the Distribution of Indigenous Ancestral Remains’ in Fforde, C, McKeown, CT Keeler, H (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew, Routledge, London, pp. 335-360.
2020: Legally Acquired? The Moral and Legal Context of Collecting Indigenous Australian Human Remains in Colonial Australia’ in Milicia, M (ed.), The Great Laboratory of Humanity, CLEUP, Padua, LP130100131 (2014-2017), pp. 235-261.
2018: ‘German-Australian Research on a Difficult Legacy: Colonial Collections of Indigenous Human Remains in German Museums and Collections’ in Nickl, B, Herrschner, I Godziak, EM (eds.), German-Australian Encounters and Cultural Transfers: Global Dynamics in Transnational Lands, Springer Singapore.
2017: Digitally Analysing Colonial Collecting. The »Return, Reconcile, Renew Project« In. Förster, Larissa, Edenheiser, Iris, Fründt, Sarah, Hartmann, Heike, eds. Provenienzforschung zu ethnografischen Sammlungen der Kolonialzeit Positionen in der aktuellen Debatte. Berlin: Arbeitsgruppe Museum der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sozial-und Kulturanthropologie. 103- 114.
2015: with Fforde, C, Ormond-Parker, L Turnbull, P 2015, ‘Repatriation Research: Archives and the Recovery of History and Heritage Repatriation and the Law’ in Redmond-Cooper, R (ed.), Heritage, ancestry and law: principles, policies and practices in dealing with historical human remains, Institute of Art and Law, London, pp. 15-36.
2014: ‘Margins, Mainstreams and the Mission of Digital Humanities,’ in Arthur, P Bode, K (eds.), Advancing Digital Humanities Research, Methods, Theories, Palgrave Macmillan„ London; New York, pp. 258-273.
2013: ‘Alternatives to Pay-for-View: The Case for Open Access to Historical Research and Scholarship’ in Kapitzke, C Bertra, CB (eds.), Libr@ries: Changing Information Space and Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, London, pp. 211-228.
2013: ‘Das indigene Australien im ersten Jahrhundert der europeanischen Invasion.’ in Hermann, M Edelmayer, F (eds.), Australien: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 18. bis 21. Jahrhunder, Wien, Verein fur Geschichte und Sozialkund; Promedia, pp. 87-100
2010: ‘The Chief Mourner’s Costume: Religion and Political Change in the Society Islands, 1768-73 ’ in Hetherington, M Morphy, H., eds, Discovering Cook’s Collections, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, pp. 41-57.
2003: ‘Pictures of Health, an Australian History Web Project’, in V. Burton and D. Herr (eds), Computing in the Social Sciences and Humanities , Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003, CD ROM media.
2001: ‘Rare Work for the Professors: The Entanglement of Aboriginal Remains in Phrenological Knowledge in Early Colonial Australia’, in Jeanette Hoorn and Barbara Creed (eds.), Body Trade: Cannibalism, Captivity and Colonialism in the Pacific,, Melbourne and London, Pluto Press, pp. 3-23.
2001: ‘The Network and the Nation: The Development of National Bibliographical Resources’, in P. Cochrane (ed.), Remarkable Occurrences: the National Library of Australia's First 100 Years,1901-2001, Canberra: National Library of Australia, pp. 255-71.
2001: ‘Mai: the Other Beyond the Exotic Stranger’, in Michelle Hetherington (ed.), Cook and Omai: The Cult of the South Seas, Canberra: National Library of Australia, pp. 41-9.
2000: ‘Repatriation’, in Sylvia Klienert and Margo Neale (eds.), Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, Oxford University Press, pp. 35-6.
2000: ‘Savages Fossil and Recent: Gerard Krefft and the Production of Racial Knowledge, ca. 1869- 73’, in Martin Crotty et. al. (eds.), Race for a Place, Newcastle: University of Newcastle pp. 133-140.
1999: ‘Enlightenment Anthropology and the Ancestral Remains of Australian Aboriginal People’, in Alex Calder et. al. (eds.), Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769 – 1840, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 202-225.
1997: 'Gibbon's Reputation as the English Voltaire', in D.J. Womersley and J.G.A. Pocock (eds.), Gibbon Bicentennial Essays
, pp. 279-308.

Refereed journal articles

2025: With Knapman G, Fforde C, Bardot J, 'Disarming the Resistance: Police Collecting of Indigenous Australian Cultural Property for Museums' The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 36:1, pp. 1-36, https://hdl.handle.net/102.100.100/711359
2025: 'Looking Up, Looking Back on the Writing of North Queensland History at James Cook University', Australian Studies Journal / Zeitschrift für Australienstudien 2025(44): 119-130
2023: With Bashar A, Nayak R, Knapman G, Fforde C. ‘An Informed Neural Network for Discovering Historical Documentation Assisting the Repatriation of Indigenous Ancestral Human Remains, Social Science Computer Review 41(6): 2293-2317
2022: ‘“'Thrown into the fossil gap”: Indigenous Australian ancestral bodily remains in the hands of early Darwinian anatomists, c. 1860-1916', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part A, 92, pp. 1-11. ISSN 0039-3681.
2021: ‘Bring the Old People Home’, History of Anthropology Review, n. 45, Online https://hdl.handle.net/102.100.100/540908, ISSN 0362-9074.
2020: ‘Amalie Dietrich and Collecting the Indigenous Dead in Colonial Queensland, Zeitschrift für Australienstudien / Australian Studies Journal, 33/34, pp. 1-10.
2020: International Repatriations of Indigenous Human Remains and Its Complexities: The Australian Experience, Museum and Society, DOI: 10.29311/mas.v18i1.3246.
2020: with R. Nayak and S. Kutty,et. al. PaperMiner - a Real-time Spatiotemporal Visualization for Newspaper Articles, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 35(1), pp. 83-100., https://academic.oup.com/dsh/article-abstract/35/1/83/5303316?redirectedFrom=fulltext
2018: ‘Managing and mapping the history of collecting indigenous human remains’, The Australian Library Journal, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 203-212.
2015: ‘Anthropological Collecting and Frontier Violence in Colonial Queensland: A Response to ’The Blood and the Bone”, Journal of Australian Colonial History, vol. 17, pp. 133-58.
2015: ‘Australian Museums, Aboriginal Skeletal Remains, and the Imagining of Human Evolutionary History’, Museum Society, vol. 13 (1), pp. 72-87.
2015: ‘The aims of Big History, History Compass, 13 (7), pp. 349-358. DOI: 10.1111/hic3.12242 2012,
‘The ‘Aboriginal’ Australian Brain in the Scientiﬁc Imagination, c. 1820-1880’, Somatechnics, vol. 2, pp. 171-92.
2010, ‘Historians, Computers and the World-Wide-Web’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 41, no. 2,
pp. 131-148.
2010: James Cook's hundred days in Queensland, Queensland Historical Atlas: Histories, Cultures, Landscapes https://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/james-cook’s-hundred-days-queensland ISSN 1838-708X
2007: Scientific Theft of Remains in Colonial Australia, Australian Indigenous Law Review, 11, pp.92-104.
2007 Scientific Theft of Remains in Colonial Australia - postscript, Australian Indigenous Law Review, 11 (2), pp. 72-75
2006: British Anatomists, Phrenologists and the Construction of the Aboriginal Race, c. 1790-1830',
History Compass, 4 (2006), pp. 26-50.
2002: ‘Die Leichen-und Seelenfledderer’, Leipziger Beitrage zur Universalgeschichte und mvergleichenden Gesellschaftsforschung vol. 10 (5/6), pp. 46-54.
2002: ‘Explorations in Hypermedia: The South Seas Project’, Archives and Manuscripts, 30, pp. 66- 81.
2000: Australian Historians and the World-Wide-Web, Public History Review, 8, pp. 17-30.
2000: ‘Learning to Understand: Western and Indigenous Sciences’, Humanities Research 1, pp. 7-20. 2000: ‘The Endeavour Project: Exploring Cross-Cultural History in Hypermedia’, LASIE: Library Automated Systems Information Exchange, vol. 31 (1), pp. 37-44.
1989: ‘''Outlawed Subjects'': The procurement and Scientific Uses of Australian Aboriginal ca.1803- 1835', Studies in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 22, n.s. 1, pp. 156-71.
1996: The Australian History World Wide Web Project', Crossings: Bulletin of the International Australian Studies Association, vol. 1, 2 (1996), pp. 41-48.
1996: 'Conversational Scholarship in Cyberspace: the Evolution and Activities of H-Net, the on-line Network for the Humanities', Australian Universities Review, vol. 39 (1), pp. 12-17.
1991: 'Edward Gibbon and Pastor Allamand', Journal of Religious History, vol. 16 (3), pp. 280-291. 1991: 'The Exchange between Edward Gibbon and Joseph Priestley', British Journal for Eighteenth-
Century Studies, vol. 14 (2), pp. 139-158.
1993: ''Ancestors, not Specimens': Aboriginal Remains in Scientific Collections', Issues in Aboriginaland Islander Studies, 4, pp. 1-31.
1991: 'Anatomy, Morphology and Aborigines: the Work of Edward Pierson Ramsay and the Australian Museum, c. 1874 - 1900', Aboriginal History, vol. 5, pp. 108-121.
1990: 'A Forgotten Cosmology: William Hull and the Origins of the Aborigines', Australian Historical Studies, 14, pp. 207-219.
1987: ''Buffeted for Ancestral Sins': Gibbon's writings on his Childhood and Catholic conversion',
Eighteenth Century Life: Studies in the Eighteenth Century, 6, pp. 18-35.
1984: 'A New Gibbon Letter of 1789: some discussion of its significance', Journal of Religious History, 2, pp. 213-225.
1982: 'The Supposed Infidelity of Edward Gibbon', The Historical Journal, 15 (1), pp. 23-41.

Encyclopedia and companion essays

2019: ‘Pitt Rivers Museum’, in Smith, C. et. al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_2657-1 .
2019: ‘Pitt Rivers Museum’, in Smith, C. et. al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, Springer, Cham,https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_2657-1"
2014: ‘Vermillion Accord on Human Remains (1989)’, in: Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, Springer, New York, NY., https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_2007">https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_2007
1999: ‘Matthew Boulton’, in I. McCalman, et . al . (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
1999: ‘Cartography and Mapping, 1780-1832’, in I. McCalman, et . al . (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
1999: ‘Evolutionary Theories’, in I. McCalman, et . al . (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
1999: ‘Edward Gibbon’, in I. McCalman, et . al . (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
1999: ‘Robert Edmond Grant’, in I. McCalman, et . al . (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
1999: ‘David Hume’, in I. McCalman, et. al. (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
1999: ‘John Hunter’, in I. McCalman, et . al . (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
1999: ‘Indigenous Peoples and Theories of Race’, in I. McCalman, et . al . (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
1999: ‘William Lawrence’, in I. McCalman, et . al . (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1999. Richard Owen, in in I. McCalman, et . al . (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
1999: ‘Phrenology’, in I. McCalman, et . al . (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1999: ‘Utilitarianism’, in I. McCalman, et . al . (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
1999: ‘William Wilberforce’, in I. McCalman, et . al . (eds.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Consultancy reports

2024: with Fforde, C. Knapman, G. and Nebbache, S.J., Preliminary Report on the Provenance of Australian Ancestral Bodily Remains, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, for International Repatriation Program, Ministry of the Arts.
2024: Report for Queensland South Islander Council on South Sea Islander Ancestral Bodily Remains in the Queensland Museum.
2024: with Sabine Eggers, et. al., Report on the Provenance of Australian Ancestral Bodily Remains, Museum of Natural History, Vienna, for Ministry of the Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.
2013: with Fforde, C., Report on Ancestral Remains returned from the Natural History Museum, Vienna in 2009, currently in the care of KALACC Kimberley Region’s Peak Indigenous Law and Culture Centre.
2020: Report on the Provenance of Australian Ancestral Bodily Remains, Marischal Museum, University of Aberdeen, For International Repatriation Program, Ministry of the Arts.
2022: with Knapman, G., Fforde, Report on the Provenance of Australian Ancestral Bodily Remains from Queensland and the Torres Strait, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris.
2023: with Eggers, S. and Berners, M. Report for Ministry of the Arts, Austrian Federal Government on Hawaiian Ancestral Bodily Remains in Austrian Federal Collections.

Refereed conference proceedings and working papers

2003: The South Seas Project: an Open Historical Knowledge Net, in Craig Cole (ed.), Proceedings of the 2001 Digital Arts Conference, Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities, pp. 138- 146.
2002: Bursting Boundaries or Hypermedia Bubble?’: Networked Hypermedia and Pacific History’, in Ewan Maidment (ed.), Papers on Digital Resources for Pacific Islands Research Presented at the Millennial Conference of the Pacific History Association, 29 June 2000, Canberra: Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, pp. 75-85.
1996: 'Electronic Publication in Australian History', in The Future of Academic Publishing: Proceedings of the 4th Australian Scholarly Academies Scholarly Publication Forum, ed. J. McCalman, Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities, pp. 99-112.
1994: with Ian Clarke and Henry Reynolds) Sharing History: Key Issues, no. 4: Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1994). pp. 50 ISBN 0644328460.
1991: Anatomy, National Identity and Aboriginal Body Snatching in Nineteenth- Century Australia, London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, Working Papers in Australian Studies, pp. 30 ISBN 85507 0340.

Invited essays in journals of opinion

2008: ‘Theft in the Name of Science’, Griffith Review , no. 21 (2008); also online at http://www3.griffith.edu.au/01/griffithreview/toc.php
1997: 'The Body and Soul Snatchers', Eureka Street, September 1997, pp. 34-8.
1996: Jogging Memories': Remembering British Post-War Migration to Australia", Voices: The Quarterly Journal of the National Library of Australia, 6, pp. 9-17.
1994: 'To What Strange Uses: The Procurement and Use of Aboriginal Peoples' Bodies in Early Colonial Australia', Voices: the Quarterly Journal of the National Library of Australia, 4, pp. 1-27.

Other writings

In addition to the above-refereed publications, I have and continue to regularly contribute review articles and book reviews to newspapers, periodicals and scholarly journals, including the Times Literary Supplement, The Journal of Pacific History, The Journal of British Studies, Australian Historical Studies, The Australian Journal of History and Politics, Museum and Society, Journal of Material Culture, Health and History, History Australia, Eighteenth-century Studies; Aboriginal History.