The Ethnography Lab of Western Australia

Africa in Australia Research and Engagement Platform

Australian museum collections contain thousands of African artefacts, all of which have their own meanings, histories and entanglements. This project is telling new stories about the history of Africa-Australian connections, through the medium of these museum collections. It is rethinking what impacts Australia’s ties with Africa have had on this country’s own past and present – and it is looking at how African connections may be used to reshape Australia’s future. African-Australian communities have grown rapidly in the past 20 years, and they have gained increasing public visibility through African community organisations, cultural festivals, and ethnic media broadcasters. Yet whilst the prominence of Africans in Australian public life is new, connections between the two continents is not. On the contrary, for over 200 years, officials and technocrats, entrepreneurs, educators, soldiers and evangelists have moved back-and-forth between Africa and Australia. In all cases, these connections have generated an enormous volume of material culture, and they have also set in motion new circulations of already-existing artefacts – including many kinds of deeply culturally-meaningful artefacts. This project is working with African-Australian communities to develop new, shared understandings about these collections, and to forward conversations about a range of subjects of common interest, from: repatriation, cultural restitution and community healing; to bi-lateral partnerships for heritage protection; to south-south knowledge exchange.

This project is being led by The University of Western Australia, with museum partners the Australian Museum, the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney, the South Australian Museum, the Uganda Museum and the Western Australian Museum, and university partners Makerere University, University of Cambridge, University of Ghana, University of Oxford and University of the Witwatersrand.

Social Surroundings

UWA is launching a major new research and engagement project, in partnership with native title corporations, and other partners, called Social Surroundings: Mobilising Landscape Values Beyond Heritage Compliance.

Social Surroundings Assessments (SSAs) are being carried out increasingly across Western Australia, as a legislative requirement for substantial, ground-disturbing proposals under the EP Act 1986. Modernising the acquisition of these social and natural values to meaningfully incorporate the current knowledge, stories, views and perspectives of Aboriginal people is a complex and challenging process – made all the more complex as SSAs have emerged within a space already dominated by heritage compliance under the previous and now WA Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act (2021). Arguably, this legislation has privileged and commoditised tangible places, features and sites over living landscapes.

This project is collaboratively exploring and evaluating new methods for recording, digitising and democratising the social, sentient, physical and biological values that matter to Traditional Owners. By workshopping new models for the more effective integration of these values into policy, legislation and operational compliance, the project aims to extend coverage and protection beyond statutory heritage compliance.

Through these means, and by leveraging the very latest models and methods on Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Science from global environmental anthropology, the project ultimately aims to achieve more effective protection, management and development of Country.

Transforming Gender, Transforming Agriculture in Vietnam

Rochelle Spencer of the Centre for Responsible Citizenship and Sustainability at Murdoch University is partnering with CARE International in Vietnam to develop an innovative participatory research project that is exploring social norms change for gender transformative agricultural development programming. Taking CARE’s Technologically Enhanced Agricultural Livelihoods (TEAL) project on Vietnam’s Arabica coffee production as a case study, the research analyses pathways to change that are facilitated using participatory gender equality tools to determine how desired change happens (or not) from the perspectives of TEAL beneficiaries (Thai ethnic minority small-scale coffee producers).
 
The project is employing participatory focus group activities such as storyboards and role-playing as creative means through which to elicit the subjective experiences of TEAL beneficiaries. It is also employing a Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) approach using photovoice. Ethnic minority research assistants were trained to coach community-based researchers in using photovoice on their smartphones for exploring their experiences of changing gender relations. After each field trip, the research team, research assistants, and community-based researchers come together for full-day sensemaking workshops that use participatory tools to make sense of the qualitative data collected. The research is funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

South Sudanese Stories

A project that grew out of the Africa in Australia platform, South Sudanese Stories is a co-designed and co-produced piece of research – led by Richard Vokes, Peter Deng and Elizabeth Lang. Working with South Sudanese Diasporic communities in Australia, East Africa, and around the world, it explores shared histories and memories of the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005) and its aftermath; the South Sudanese Diaspora’s experiences of migration, settlement and post-settlement (especially in Australia and the UK) and; the changing nature of the lineage, kin work, and other kinds of social organisation and social obligations within emerging transnational fields. In pursuit of these goals, the project is developing a number of separate, yet overlapping, components including a podcast series with South Sudanese factual authors (being co-produced by Richard Vokes and Peter Deng); a multi-modal ethnography of South Sudanese lived experiences in Perth, Australia (being co-created with one of Australia’s most exciting rising stars of the art world, Atong Atem, and; The Digital Village project which aims to redeem the archaic anthropological analytical category of ‘the village’ for the digital-satellite age, by recasting it as not as a site in Euclidean space, nor as a set of bounded social relations, but instead as a set of online strategies for navigating transnational fields, including through platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter.  

Ge'ez Manuscripts

Ethiopia has a rich intellectual tradition with more than a million manuscripts written in Ge’ez. Ge’ez is the ancient language of Ethiopia and Eritrea and is still in use in traditional educational institutions called Abinet schools. It is also the language in which many great tomes of history and philosophy were written. However, since the 19th Century, many of these indigenous intellectual materials have been collected by European institutions and private collectors as artifacts, making them inaccessible to Abinet school students. This is confounded by the fact that indigenous knowledge and the Ge’ez language are excluded from the state education system. 

This ongoing research project focuses on understanding and addressing the impact of the loss of Ge’ez manuscripts on Abinet students. Yirga Woldeyes has been conducting ethnographic research that involves Abinet students from three locations in Ethiopia, namely Gondar, Lalibela, and Bahir Dar. The research involves participants narrating their lived experiences in focus-group discussions, exploring the challenges and opportunities they face in accessing their intellectual heritage, and forming strategies and alliances to pursue ways of accessing lost manuscripts. The research process informs ongoing study in empowering local communities to articulate their voices and access their intellectual and cultural heritage, wherever in the world it may now be.

The Field—Notes Project

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz once asked himself rhetorically ‘what does the ethnographer do?’ and answered ‘he writes’ (Works and Lives, 1973). Yet new research into fieldwork practice, as well as critical interventions into anthropology’s historic archives, are demonstrating that ‘fieldnotes’ are so much more than just writing. They are a distillation and snapshot of complex and shifting relations; an assemblage of multiple technologies for recording and; a site for the co-production of shared imaginaries of the past, present, and future.

This project is providing new insights into fieldnotes – and by extension into fieldwork in general – through:

• the digitisation of, and digital interventions into, historically significant collections of fieldnote-assemblages
• interviews with anthropologists of multiple generations, working all over the world, on their ethnographic training, practices and experiences
• by using digital interventions to reconfigure the relations, assemblages and imaginaries of ‘fieldnotes’  in novel – engaging and challenging – ways.

Through these means, the project rethinks the very possibilities for making and using ethnographic fieldnotes, in ways that may progress the goals of decolonisation in the satellite-digital age. 

Richard Vokes (Director), UWA

Richard Vokes is an Associate Professor in International Development, and Discipline Lead for Anthropology, at The University of Western Australia. He is also a Research Affiliate of Oxford University, and a Research Associate of the Western Australian Museum Boola Bardip. As an Oxford University-trained anthropologist, Richard has been undertaking ethnographic research for 25 years, especially in Uganda and East Africa, and also in Antarctica and Australia. Many of his projects have focused on ethnographic methods and he has been outputting publications, and multi-modal projects, on this subject since 2006. Prior to that, he was a researcher on, and wrote the main textbook for, the UK’s first ever digital platform in the Social Sciences, the nationwide ‘Experience-Rich Anthropology’ platform (era.anthropology.ac.uk). In 2013, he was part of a team that developed an app and eBook called ‘Gorilla Highlands’, which in 2014 won a UN World Summit Award, the highest international prize in digital engagement. He is currently leading a number of major international projects in anthropology and development. 

Gertrude Atukunda, Makerere University

Dr Atukunda holds a PhD in Sociology of Makerere University. She is a Socio-economist, employed with the National Agricultural Research Organisation, and based at the Aquaculture Research and Development Centre, Kajjansi. She has over 20 years’ experience conducting socio-economics research with focus on understanding livelihoods of rural farmers, including fish farmers and fishing communities. She has worked on various research projects focusing on economic analysis of fish farming enterprises, fish marketing and consumption dynamics, farmer organisations and the role extension service delivery in aquaculture development. She has participated in collaborative research projects within Uganda and with international partners in USA, Australia, Kenya, Tanzania and Congo with whom she has published her research. 

Rochelle Spencer, Murdoch University

Rochelle Spencer’s research embodies a commitment to applied anthropology, that is, the application of anthropological knowledge to development practice with emphasis on participatory processes. Her cross-cultural expertise informs her research with the intention of shaping local capacity development processes, gender sensitive approaches and inclusion of local perspectives. Her strengths lie in applying participatory approaches to the design, implementation and evaluation of development projects that help to inform technical expertise, programming, and policy. In this way, her research has significant applied real-world outcomes as it informs the development policy and processes of NGOs, development agencies, the private sector, and government to ensure the inclusion of local perspectives in development. Rochelle’s research spans the anthropology of development, gender and rural livelihoods, Indigenous social enterprise, capacity development and development tourism. Rochelle is founding co-Director of the Centre for Responsible Citizenship and Sustainability at Murdoch University, co-Chair of the Research for Development Impact Network, and Deputy Editor of the journal Development in Practice.

Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes, Curtin University

Yirga Gelaw is a Senior Lecturer, multidisciplinary researcher and writer based at Curtin University’s Centre for Human Rights Education, Australia. Yirga has extensive experience from working with grassroots organisations in Ethiopia. Drawing from the lived experiences, philosophies, beliefs, and interests of marginalised communities across diverse cultures, Yirga contributes critical insights for reimagining the future and addressing social, epistemic, and racial injustices. He researches African historical experiences and Ethiopian traditions and writes creatively on belonging and diasporic lives. He has won university and industry awards for his teaching, research, and creative writing. His book Native Colonialism: Education and the Economy of Violence against Traditions in Ethiopia was published in 2017. The book contributed the theory of Native Colonialism, a process whereby a country colonises itself with ideas, institutions and practices that subjugate the majority of its population. His recent book (co-edited with Offord, Fleay, Hartley and Chan), Activating Cultural and Social Change: The Pedagogies of Human Rights is published by Routledge in 2022.

Benjamin Smith, UWA

Benjamin Smith is the Professor of World Rock Art in the School of Social Sciences at The University of Western Australia. He is an archaeologist by training with a research focus on ancient art, heritage and tourism. He is Lead Chief Investigator for the Digitisation Centre of Western Australia (Phase 1) project and co-lead of the Chinese Western Australians project. In both projects he is conducting research on issues of material culture and identity. You can contact Benjamin via email.

Kwadwo Adusei-Asante, Edith Cowan University

Kwadwo Adusei-Asante is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts and Humanities at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. Kwadwo has 20 years international research experience mainly on projects in Africa, Australia, The Netherlands and Sri Lanka. Over the last two decades Kwadwo’s research has focused on African communities and building evaluations systems and frameworks for the Australian social sector. As a Chief Investigator, Kwadwo has received projects and research funding of almost a million dollars. Kwadwo has produced over 120 publications in project reports, journal articles, book chapters, refereed conference papers, theses and presentations and achieved 10 PhD completions. Kwadwo is currently the Associate Editor of the Evaluation Journal of Australasia, and serves as a Board Member of the International Organisation for Cooperation in Evaluation representing the national professional evaluation groups in Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific Regions. Kwadwo is the founder and CEO of Edxcellence Incorporated, an organisation committed to offering civic information services and educational support to people from non-English speaking backgrounds across Perth, Western Australia, through contextualising teaching and learning practices.