Dr Melinda Hinkson

Lecturer in Anthropology

Email: melinda.hinkson@anu.edu.au
Phone: + 61 2 6125 8246

Research Interests

My research falls broadly within three areas of interest — work on mediated interaction, visual expression, and intercultural identity in Aboriginal Australia; the history of anthropology (particularly through the intellectual life of Australian anthropologist WEH Stanner); and, processes of identity making in the present. These interests inform and are informed by my undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in courses on media and modernity, visual culture research, and the history of anthropological theory.

I am currently in the early stages of developing a new project on the relations between persons and images in contemporary Australian society under the working title ‘Living Images’. The aim of the project is to flesh out through a series of ethnographic case studies what I refer to as the new cultural attitude to images brought about by the expanded reach of screen-based visual culture and digital processes.

In Central Australia I have worked with Warlpiri people on their use of new media and communications technologies. Warlpiri people, working since the 1980s with non-Aboriginal collaborators, have taken up radio, video, television, video conferencing technology and the internet for a wide range of purposes. This research explains Warlpiri use of new media in terms of the historical processes and intercultural engagements through which such media have become accessible, and explores the way these media facilitate Warlpiri social interaction in an increasingly complex world. At a broader level, the research explores questions about the forms of Warlpiri identity that are being produced in an era of technologically accelerated globalisation.

I have also worked with Aboriginal communities in and around metropolitan Sydney regarding their historical and abiding relationships to place, and with Kuninjku people of north-west Arnhem Land on their contemporary harvesting practices, art production and gender relations.

I have also researched aspects of the lifework of Australian anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner, who worked across the fields of Aboriginal affairs and anthropology in Australia and abroad from the 1930s until his death in 1981.

At a broader conceptual level I am interested in theorising contemporary identity construction, especially the forms of personhood that are produced in societies where mediated communication has become a dominant form of social engagement.

Recent and Main Publications

Books

Hinkson, M. & Beckett, J. (eds) 2008. An Appreciation of Difference: WEH Stanner and Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.

Altman, J. and Hinkson, M. (eds) 2007. Coercive Reconciliation: Stabilise, Normalise, Exit Aboriginal Australia, Arena Publications, Melbourne.

Hinkson, M. 2001. Aboriginal Sydney: A Guide to Important Places of the Past and Present, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.

Edited volumes

Hinkson, M. & Smith, B. (eds) 2005. Figuring the Intercultural in Aboriginal Australia, special issue of Oceania vol. 75, no. 3.

Refereed articles and book chapters

Hinkson, M. 2009 Australia's Bill Henson scandal: Notes on the new cultural attitude to images, Visual Studies 24 (3) (forthcoming).

Beckett, J. and Hinkson, M. 2008. ‘Going more than half-way to meet them’ On the life and legacy of W.E.H. Stanner. In Hinkson, M. & Beckett, J. (eds) An Appreciation of Difference, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.

Hinkson, M. 2008. Stanner and Makerere: on the ‘insuperable’ challenges of practical anthropology in post-war East Africa. In Hinkson, M. & Beckett, J. (eds) An Appreciation of Difference, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.

Hinkson, M. 2008. Journey to the source: In pursuit of Fitzmaurice rock art and the High Culture. In Hinkson, M. & Beckett, J. (eds) An Appreciation of Difference, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.

2007 In the name of the child. In Altman, J. and Hinkson, M. (eds) Coercive Reconciliation: Stabilise, Normalise, Exit Aboriginal Australia, Arena Publications: Melbourne, pp. 1-12.

2007 [co-authored with Jon Altman] Mobility and modernity in Arnhem Land:
The social universe of Kuninjku trucks. Journal of Material Culture vol. 12 issue 2. (View full text as pdf)

2005 [co-authored with Benjamin Smith] Conceptual moves toward an intercultural analysis. Oceania 75 (3): 157-66.

2005 The intercultural challenge of W.E.H. Stanner’s first fieldwork. Oceania 75 (3): 195-208.(View full text as pdf)

2005 New media projects at Yuendumu: towards a history and analysis of intercultural engagement. In Taylor, L., Ward, G. Henderson, G., Davis, R. and Wallis, L (eds) The Power of Knowledge, the Resonance of Tradition, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, pp. 157-68.

2004 Rebranding Australia — In a different light? Arena Journal 22: 37-44.

2004 What’s in a dedication? On being a Warlpiri DJ. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 15 (2): 143-162. (View full text as pdf)

2003 Encounters with Aboriginal sites in Sydney: A broadening horizon for cultural tourism? Journal of Sustainable Tourism 11 (4): 295-306. (View f ull text as pdf)

2002. Exploring ‘Aboriginal’ sites in Sydney: a shifting politics of place? Aboriginal History 26: 62-77. (View f ull text as pdf)

2002 New media projects at Yuendumu: Inter-cultural engagement and self-determination in an era of accelerated globalization. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 16 (2): 201-220. (View full text as pdf)

Select other publications

Hinkson, M. 2009 The trouble with suffering [review of Peter Sutton's The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Australia and the end of Liberal Consensus] Arena Magazine, no. 101, pp. 54-57.

Hinkson, M. 2008. Image culture, art and sex: notes on the Bill Henson scandal, Arena Magazine no. 95: 47-49

Hinkson, M. 2008. On looking at and feeling Aboriginal art [review of Biddle, J. 2006. Breasts, Bodies Canvas (UNSW Press) and Papunya Painting: Out of the Desert, exhibition at National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 28 November 2007 – 3 February 2008], Arena Magazine no. 93, pp. 48-51.

Hinkson, M. 2006. The reality of TV, Arena Magazine, no. 83, pp. 32-34.

Hinkson, M. 2005. Rarrk — John Mawurndjul: A journal through time in northern Australia, Art Monthly Australia, no. 185, November, pp. 14-19.

Hinkson, M. 2005. On Papunya’s place in history [Review essay on Bardon, G. & Bardon, J. Papunya: A Place Made After The Story: The Beginnings of the Western Desert Art Movement, Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, 2004], Arena Magazine 76, pp. 51-53.

Hinkson, M. 2005 Stanner, W.E.H. Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd Edition, Macmillan: Farmington Hills, MI, pp. 8729-8730.

Hinkson, M. 2000. Aboriginal Media Associations, Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, p. 643.

Hinkson, M. 2000. Television, Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, pp. 710–712.

2000 Aboriginal Media Associations, Television, entries in Keinert, S. & Neale, M. (eds) The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, pps. 643, 710-712.

1998 Yanardilyi - Cockatoo Creek, a CD-Rom co-produced with Dennis Jupurrurla Nelson and Glenn James for Tanami Network, Yuendumu.

Courses Currently Taught

ANTH8017 History of Anthropological Theory
ANTH2128 Media and Modernity
ANTH8035 Topics in the History of Anthropology
VISC8001 Introduction to Visual Culture