Ross Chadwick

Head of Department

Anthropology and Archaeology

BSc, Grad Dip MusStudies, PhD

Research

A long term research project centres on anthropology of sport with a particular focus on the Aboriginal experience of sport in Western Australia. This furthers my PhD research that examined Aboriginal experiences of cricket in Western Australia. My wider interests in this area include the ways in which people use sport to creating meaning and identity and how it is used to negotiate and frame relationships within and between different fields of sociality.

A second interest is the development of museum collections, with an emphasis on collections of Aboriginal cultural materials. This interest focuses on the ways museum collections form and the kinds of things these collections say about their source communities, the collectors and consumers and the broader role that museums play as cultural repositories and keepers of a community’s heritage.

Collections

Manager of the Museum’s Indigenous Repatriation Program (IRP) that seeks to return Aboriginal Ancestral Remains and significant secret/sacred objects back to their relevant community/custodians.

Responsibility for the management and planning of the Department’s Collection Management Information System.

Selected Publications 

Chadwick, R.R. 2008 “Your Obedient Servant”: the John Tunney collection at the Western Australian Museum. In The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections. N. Peterson, L. Allen and L. Hamby (eds). MUP 

Chadwick, R.R. 2002 One for All and All for One? Collection management databases at the Western Australian Museum. ARC Journal, 2002