Our students
The Anthropology Department has research strengths in a number of core areas of socio-cultural anthropology. Special areas of expertise include medical anthropology covering global health, infectious disease, reproductive and sexual health and psychological anthropology. A second overarching theme of staff research covers religion studies, in particular Islam and new religious formations. A third area of expertise is development studies and the social impact of globalising economic formations, mobility and migration, human rights, and new social movements. A further area of research interest is phenomenology, embodied experience and the anthropology of emotion.
Since our founding under the late Professor Chandra Jayawardena, the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University has maintained a broad international focus, extensive social engagement, concentration on the politics of everyday life, concern about the ethical requirements of anthropology, and an eagerness to innovate. Our staff members are all active as researchers, supporting a wide range of projects, including student research at all levels.The Department maintains a high degree of research support, including funding for HDR students' field research.
Annually, we sponsor a Research Week, when visiting scholars of international stature help us to prepare our students to be competitive professionally and to strengthen our global networks for collaboration. We also support a very active colloquium series.
Medical anthropology
This area of specialty includes global health, infectious disease, as well as reproductive and sexual health. Although a number of our researchers have interest in areas linked to medicine and health, the following researchers concentrate especially on medical anthropology: Aaron Denham | Chris Lyttleton | Kalpana Ram | Lisa Wynn| Kevin Groark
Religion in anthropology
The study of religion in anthropology is a rich tradition, as the confrontation with world religious diversity was one of the historical conditions that helped to create our discipline. In our department, a number of scholars study contemporary religion and culture, especially Islam and Christianity in the Pacific. The following scholars are especially active in the study of religion: Gabriele Marranci | Jaap Timmer | Deborah VanHeekeren | Lisa Wynn | Chris Houston
Development, globalisation, political and social issues
Since our founding, the Department of Anthropology has maintained a strong focus on political anthropology and the study of development, as well as support for applied anthropology in a variety of situations. A number of staff work on political, social and development issues around the world and a host of related issues, such as legal plurality, urbanisation, indigenous rights, and human rights. Although virtually all staff recognise political and social issues in their research to some degree, staff that focus especially strongly in this area include: Greg Downey | Chris Houston | Chris Lyttleton | Jaap Timmer | Eve Vincent| Chris Vasantkumar
Psychological and phenomenological anthropology
Human diversity includes variation in perception, experience, cognition, and basic psychological functions, including mental health. Macquarie University's Department of Anthropology is distinctive in Australia because of the concentration of researchers with psychological and phenomenological research interests, in a wide variety of settings. Please contact one of the following researchers if you are interested in the anthropological study of experience, emotion, perception, health, or cognition: Aaron Denham | Greg Downey | Gabriele Marranci | Kalpana Ram | Deborah VanHeekeren| Kevin Groark
HDR research projects
Recent doctoral research submissions
| Student Name | Thesis Title |
|---|---|
| SUMANT BADAMI | The Ant Knows its Way: Paniya negotiations with death, place and belonging |
| MUHAMMAD BILAL | Allah's Community: The Interplay of Islam and Everyday Life in Pakistan. An Ethnography of a Rawalpindi Urban Community. |
| GILLIAN BOWAN | Paying Guests: Between Kinship and Capital—An Ethnography of Boarding House Residents in Urban South India. |
| MONICA DALIDOWICZ | Learning Kathak: Apprenticeship in the Guru-Shishya Parampara |
| ANTON PIYARATHNE DEEGALLA DURAGE | Constructing Commongrounds: Everyday Lifeworlds Beyond Politicised Ethnicities in Sri Lanka. |
| CAROLINE GRILLOT | Trans-frontiers marriages between Vietnamese women and Chinese men. |
| NIPHATTRA HARITAVORN | Why do they call me Khiya?: Gender and identity construction amongst people injecting drugs in Thailand |
| JOHANES HERLIJANTO | Chinese Politics of Development in Post-Cold War Indonesia. |
| CHARLOTTE KESKIN-JOPPIEN | Culture of Everyday Politics - Politics of Everyday Culture. An Inquiry Into Municipal Politics in Konya and Eskisehir. |
| VICTORIA LOBLAY | Embodied Encounters with Reproductive Technologies: Constellations of sexual difference and the boundaries of knowledge in the clinic |
| YUNXIA LI | A "Proper" Cultivation of Akha ?- A Study of Rubber Tree Plantation in China/Loas border area. |
| CASIMIR MACGREGOR | Ideologies of the Body: An Ethnography of Biotechnology Governance and Bioethics in Human Embryonic Stem Cell and Cloning Research in Australia. |
| PAUL MASON | Fighting for peace of mind: A cross-cultural survey of fight-dancing in Indonesia and Brazil |
| LINDY MCDOUGALL | The biomagical vulva: a 'clean slit' |
| DENG RUI | Dynamics of Social Change and HIV Vulnerability in SW China. |
| ANUPOM ROY | Biomedicine and chronic illness: Insight into the experiences of Bangladeshi sufferers with chronic respiratory illness |
| DOUANGPHET SAYANOUSO | Changing lives: Development and reproductive health amongst the Akha, an Ethnic minority group in Northwest Laos |
| NILA SHARMA | Born to migrate: South Asian women in Sydney and the convergence of marriage, migration and maternity in shaping their participation in the paid workforce |
| MICHAELA STOCKEY-BRIDGE | Finding hope on the Transnational Surrogacy Trail from Australia to India. |
| GUY THRELFO | They don't look like refugees: The presentation of "refugeeness" among Liberians in exile |
| MERRIDEN VARRALL | Chinese Development Aid in Venezuela |
| MARISKE WESTENDORP | “In the Eye of the Typhoon”: Aspirations of Buddhists and Catholics in Turbulent Hong Kong. |
| JUAN ZHANG | Paradoxical perceptions and inchoate identities: Chinese cross-border migration in the Greater-Mekong sub-region |
Current doctoral research
| Student Name | Thesis Title |
|---|---|
| Barr, Phillipa | Atmospheres without limits. |
| Bell, Lara | Bodies through the machines:An Ethnography of Prostrate Cancer and Robot-Assisted Surgery. |
| Branagan, Lesley | The consequences of India's new health care delivery for Urban poor people's experiences of illness and healing. |
| Bryant, Avril | |
| Casbolt, Lucinda | Bicycle-Body-City: Experiences of Urban Cycling in Copenhagen. |
| Chao, Sophie | Hungry for change: agribusiness land grabs and transformations in food practices and values in West Papua, Indonesia. |
| Costa, Roberto | Resistance and Happiness in Melanesian Religious Rituality. |
| Dabinet, Anmarie | Recuperating the 'Disappeared'. Memories and Stories from Argentina and Spain in the Post Dictatorship Era. |
| Evans, Tanya | Imaging a liveable city: Analysing the conceptualisation of urban design and its meaning for residents in modern high-rise apartment buildings in Sydney. |
| Finis, Kenneth | Cambodia and intergenerational impact after trauma: The past and the present amongst the post-1979 generation. |
| Harwood, Max | 'Man Made': Kemalism, Islam and its effect on Turkish masculinity. |
| Irving, Lisa | Secret, shameful and risky pleasures: a comparative study of unmarried Muslims' sexuality and reproductive health in Singapore and Australia. |
| Keil, Paul | Human-Elephant Entanglements: An ethnographic analysis of mahout-elephant working units mediating human elephant conflict in Assam, North-East India |
| Lecompte, Maarten | The emerging story writer of a study of linguistic and meta linguistic phenomena in the writing of Cemuhi, a language of New Caledonia. |
| Matteson, Michael | Safe Houses and Active Supporters in the Underground Draft Resistance Movement in Australian 1971-72. |
| McGirr, Lara | Aspiring to Marriage: The Influence of Civil Union, Divorce and Catholicism on Marriage in France. |
| Morgan, Brendan | The Practice of everyday Antihaitianismo: A study of daily interaction in Santo Domingo. |
| Prastyani, Ade | Tobacco Farming in Indonesia. |
| Rickson, Joseph | "One Sovereign Ground" The Politics of Everyday Life, Kachin at the Thai-Burma Border. |
| Scott, David | Pictures in an Exhibition: Art, Agency and the role of Exhibition in Generating Social Discourse. |
| Uygur Dogan, Aysegul | The AKP's Reproduction of Hegemony Though Regionalisation of Turkey. |
Recent theses
| Student Name | Thesis Title |
|---|---|
| BOXALL, Fiona | The New Age of Corporate Management: Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine.' |
| COHEN, Anjalee | Youth Culture in Northern Thailand |
| DEGER, Jennifer | 'Shimmering Screens: Mimesis, Media and a Vision of a Yolngu Aboriginal Modernity' |
| EVERETT, Kristina | 'Impossible Realities: Indigenous and Non-indigenous Relationships in a Sydney Aboriginal Community' |
| GIBSON, Lorraine | Articulating Culture(s): Being Black in Wilcannia |
| HADDON, Malcolm | The Nectar of Translation: Conversion, Mimesis and Cultural Translation in Krishna Consciousness'. |
| LYNCH, Tim | Memories of Ritual Child Abuse in Satanic Cults in Australia |
| Maud, Jovan | The Sacred Borderland: The State, a Buddhist Saint and Transnational Religion in Southern Thailand |
| MOLLAND, Sverre | Economic pleasures and pleasure economies: purchasing sex along the Melcong |
| MONCHAMP, Anne Marie | Memory, Categorization and Language: Cognition and Culture in Bilingual Wallpiri Aboriginal Children |
| ONNUDOTTIR, Helena | Claiming Inheritance Aboriginal People, Native Title and Cultural Heritage: a Story from Dubbo New South Wales |
| Sakboon, Mukdawan | Citizenship and Education as the Basis for National Integration of Ethic Minorities in Northern Thailand |
| SCOTT, Gwendolyn | Corporate Australian and Australian government policies regarding Muslim women employees |
| SPENCER, Rochelle | 'Encountering Development, Rethinking Tourism: The Convergence of Development and Tourism' |
| WARDELL, Martina | Indigenous Education, Christianity, and Community at Woolaning Homeland Christian College |
| WILKOSZEWSKI,Tomas | The Uyghur Community in Turkey:Nostalgic Pan-Turkism, Ethno-Nationalism and Political Adjustments |
| WISS, Rosemary | Tryst Troppo sex, tourism, relationships (Puerto Galera, The Philippines) |