About the author

After a period working as a visual artist and art teacher in Norwich, London and Oxford, Ian Keen completed his secondary education at evening classes, and then studied anthropology at University College London, graduating in 1973.  He spent a term as a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics, then was awarded an Australian National University scholarship. He moved with his family to Canberra early in 1974 to be a research scholar in the Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific Studies, from 1974 to 1978. His field research on Yolngu religion, kinship and social organisation, at Milingimbi and Nangalala in northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory resulted in a PhD thesis, One Ceremony, One Song: An Economy of Religious Knowledge Among Yolngu of Northeast Arnhem Land , as well as subsequent articles and a book.

            Between 1979 and 1987 Ian was employed as tutor, lecturer and senior lecture in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Queensland, where he developed courses on Aboriginal culture and society, kinship and gender, anthropological theory, religion and symbolism. He supervised and advised a number of honours, masters and PhD students.

            Ian’s field research during this period was mainly related to Aboriginal land claims under the Northern Territory Land Rights Act: the Alligator Rivers Stage II Land Claim (1979-80), traditional ownership of the Nourlangie area, and the McLaren Creek Land Claim (1986-7). He also conducted research on ownership of land on the Gove Peninsula occasioned by a dispute over the distribution of mining royalties (1987), and played a minor role in closure of seas applications at Milingimbi, and in the Timber Creek land claim. With Leonn Satterthwait he gained a large ARC grant to research relations between environment, technology and society in Aboriginal societies.

            During the same period Ian published articles on Yolngu kinship and symbolism, kinship theory, and on the anthropology of Aboriginal land claims. He edited the volume Being Black (1988), and wrote a short book for schools ( How Australia was Settled , 1986).

            Ian moved with his family to Canberra at the end of 1987 to take up a position as senior lecturer in the Department of Prehistory and Anthropology, School of General Studies (now the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Faculties) at the Australian National University, and was promoted to Reader in 1998. He taught courses in Aboriginal studies, anthropological theory, kinship, the anthropology of art, philosophical, political and ethical issues in anthropology, and the anthropology of technology; and supervised and advised a number of honours, masters and PhD students.

            He maintained his involvement in applied anthropology during this period, with a consultancy (with Francesca Merlan) relating to the Coronation Hill Inquiry by the Resource Assessment Commission (1989-90), and conducted six months’ fieldwork in eastern Victoria on Aboriginal native title.

            Between 1988 and 2002  Ian wrote Knowledge and Secrecy in an Aboriginal Religion (1994, second edition 1997, joint winner of the Stanner Prize), and published articles on Yolngu group structure, native title, Yolngu religious property, Aboriginal governance, Yolngu myth, religious symbolism and dreams, the Coronation Hill dispute, applied anthropology in general, and authentic performance in classical music. Following his programmatic article ‘A continent of foragers’ (1997), he returned to his library and archival research for a comparative study of ‘precolonial’ Aboriginal economy and society, the topic of the earlier ARC grant with Leonn Satterthwait.  An invitation as Visiting Professor at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan during 2000-2001 enabled him to complete the research, also assisted by a Faculties Research Fund grant. This research resulted in the book Aboriginal Economy and Society: Australia at the Threshold of Colonisation (2003), as well as a number of conference papers and articles.

            Ian Keen is currently a member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the Australian Anthropological Society, the American Association of Anthropologists in Oceania, and the European Society of Oceanists. He regularly attends, organises sessions and gives papers at conferences in the International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies series (most recently in Edinburgh). He retired from teaching at the end of 2002, and is now a Visiting Fellow in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology. He continues to supervise postgraduate students, and is currently planning his next research project