The University of Western Australia

Asst/Prof Debra McDougall

Assistant Professor
Anthropology and Sociology

Contact details

Address

Anthropology and Sociology
The University of Western Australia (M255)
35 Stirling Highway
CRAWLEY WA 6009
Australia

Phone

6488 2869

Fax

6488 1062

Email

debra.mcdougall@uwa.edu.au

Qualifications

BA Penn. MA PhD Chic.

Biography

Having joined UWA in 2006 as an ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Debra is now an Assistant Professor in Anthropology and Sociology. She received a BA (with Honours) in History from Penn State University and an MA and PhD in Anthropology from The University of Chicago. Prior to moving to Perth, taught at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA).

Key research

Since 1996, Debra has carried out intensive long-term fieldwork in the Solomon Islands. Her PhD research was focused on Ranongga Island, in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands, and while her postdoctoral research has involved some research on other islands and in the towns of Gizo and Honiara, her "home" in the Solomons remains Ranongga. While her research has been focussed geographically, it has ranged thematically over a many arenas of social and political life in this island society.

Publications

Under review, Christian Politics in Oceania, volume co-edited with Matt Tomlinson.

Under review, "Evangelical Public Culture: Making Stranger-Citizens in Solomon Islands," in Christian Politics in Oceania, Matt Tomlinson and Debra McDougall, eds.

In press (2011), “Church, Company, Committee, Chief: Emergent Collectivities in Rural Solomon Islands, in Managing Modernity: Capitalism, Cosmopology, and Globalization in the Pacific, Mary Patterson and Martha Maintyre, eds. Pp 121-146. University of Queensland Press.

2011 (with Joy Kere). “Christianity, Custom, and Law: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Post-Conflict Solomon Islands,” In Mediating Across Difference: Indigenous, Oceanic and Asian Approaches to Conflict Resolution, Morgan Brigg and Roland Bleiker, eds. Pp 141-162. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

2009. “Becoming Sinless: Converting to Islam in the Christian Solomon Islands,” American Anthropologist 111 (4): 480-491.

2009. “Rethinking Christianity and Anthropology: A Review Article (review essay),” Anthropological Forum 19 (2): 185-194.

2009. “Christianity, Relationality, and the Material Limits of Individualism: Reflections on Robbins’s Becoming Sinners,” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 10 (1): 1-19.

2008. “Religious Institutions as Alternative Structures in Post-conflict Solomon Islands: Cases from the Western Province,” State, Society, and Governance in Melanesia Project Discussion Paper Series, 2008/5, Canberra: Australian National University.

2008. “Christian Dilemmas Beyond Locality” [Review essay on Webb Keane, Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter (U California, 2007) and Matthew Engelke, A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church (U California, 2007)] Current Anthropology, 49 (5): 945-946.

2007 (with S. Albert, J. Udy, G. Baines). “Dramatic tectonic uplift of fringing reefs on Ranongga Is., Solomon Islands,” Coral Reefs (“Online First” edition). (http://www.springerlink.com/content/22v15n7k4225h182/fulltext.html)

2006. "New Interventions, Old Asymmetries: Australia & the Solomon Islands," The New Critic, Issue 3, 2006, online (http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/the_new_critic).

2005. "The Unintended Consequences of Clarification: Development, Disputing, and the Dynamics of Community in Ranongga, Solomon Islands," Ethnohistory 52 (1): 81-109.
(http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=15579582&site=ehost-live)

2003. "Fellowship and Citizenship as Models of National Community: United Church Women's Fellowship in Ranongga, Solomon Islands," Oceania 74 (1-2): 61-80.
(http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rlh&AN=14084698&site=ehost-live)

2000. "Paths of Pinauzu: Captivity and Social Reproduction in Ranongga," Journal of the Polynesian Society 109 (1): 99-113.

Future research

Building on both PhD research and postdoctoral research, I am completing a book manuscript that focuses on how some residents of this troubled and highly diverse nation engage with those they consider foreign.

Funding received

2006 Australian Research Council Discovery Grant
1999 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Small Grant (USA)
1998 Social Science Research Council, International Dissertation Research Fellowship (USA)
1995-1998 National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship (USA)

Languages

Kubokota and Luqa (two Austronesian languages of the Solomons), Solomon Islands Pijin, intermediate written and spoken German

Memberships

Australian Anthropological Society
American Anthropological Association
Society for the Anthropology of Religion

Honours and awards

Prize for best postdoctoral publications in the Faculty of Arts for "Becoming Sinners" (see below).

Previous positions

ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Anthropology and Sociology, University of Western Australia, 2006-2010.

Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA), 2004-2006

Preceptor, Program in International Studies, University of Chicago, 2003-2004

Lecturer, Department of Anthropology and Social Science Collegiate Division, University of Chicago 2004.

Teaching

Coordinates: Global Change, Local Responses; Religion: Anthropological and Sociological Approaches; and Religion and Globalization. Welcomes postdoctural students working on the Asia-Pacific region or topics involving religion, politics, development, kinship, and other themes.

Current external positions

Expert peer reviewer, Justice for the Poor Project, World Bank in Honiara.

Useful links

https://blog.arts.uwa.edu.au/rgi/

New and noteworthy

See the blog of UWA's Religion and Globalization Initiative (above), with announcements of events and topical postings by students of ANTH2201.

Research profile

Research profile and publications