Dispossession and colonization, 1780-1820. Massacre and colonization is an extremely topical project given the increasing public discussions around race relations, and how those interactions have helped shape our identity. This project will advance the ongoing debate by exploring the nature of Indigenous dispossession in the world. It will also aid in the process of national reconciliation.
The Impact of Water Stress on Early Humans in the Kalahari Desert. This project aims to understand the impacts of water stressed environments for early modern human behaviour through state-of-the-art excavation techniques and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction at two new archaeological sites in the Kalahari. How humans mitigated water stress during a major technological transition is significant because adaptability to arid environments was crucial for humans expanding beyond Africa and into Aus ....The Impact of Water Stress on Early Humans in the Kalahari Desert. This project aims to understand the impacts of water stressed environments for early modern human behaviour through state-of-the-art excavation techniques and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction at two new archaeological sites in the Kalahari. How humans mitigated water stress during a major technological transition is significant because adaptability to arid environments was crucial for humans expanding beyond Africa and into Australia. The expected outcome of this project is creation of new knowledge on the origins of human resilience to water stress. The benefit lies in the potential to gain insights into meeting future climate challenges by exploring the adaptive strategies developed by early modern humans in the southern Kalahari.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120100593
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
Protecting the peace: protectors and the legal transformation of the British Empire, 1820-1850. This project will examine the impact of two new imperial offices, the Protector of Slaves and Protector of Aborigines on the legal constitution of the British Empire at a moment of rapid transformation. It will show these offices operated both as new weapons both of legal imperialism and of intimate colonial governance.
Expanding and resolving the earliest modern human divergence through DNA. This project aims to expand and resolve the earliest modern human divergence. Although it is clear modern humans emerged from Africa, there is no consensus on the timeline of modern human evolution. Archaeological evidence suggests two contenders: east and southern Africa. Genetic data supports the latter; the team’s own data shows that the southern African KhoeSan click-speaking forager peoples have the oldest extant huma ....Expanding and resolving the earliest modern human divergence through DNA. This project aims to expand and resolve the earliest modern human divergence. Although it is clear modern humans emerged from Africa, there is no consensus on the timeline of modern human evolution. Archaeological evidence suggests two contenders: east and southern Africa. Genetic data supports the latter; the team’s own data shows that the southern African KhoeSan click-speaking forager peoples have the oldest extant human lineages. This project will generate large mitochondrial genome and whole genome sequence data for KhoeSan lineages. This is expected to narrow the time of modern human emergence.Read moreRead less
Immortal Egypt: cultural tradition and transition during the first intermediate period at Meir. The project will gain new knowledge about the development of ancient Egyptian culture by examining well-preserved tombs dating from the Old through to the Middle Kingdom periods at the cemetery of Meir and analysing the ways in which art, architecture, and socio-religious institutions at the site were maintained or altered over a span of 900 years.
Liturgical texts and practices in the ancient world. This project aims to reconstruct the liturgical life of one of the most diverse and influential religious traditions across Eurasia, from Roman Egypt to early modern China: the Manichaeans. It investigates cultural adaptation, chronological development and unity of practice in a deeper manner that helps support the discipline of religious studies more generally. It expects to generate new knowledge through the critical editing of complex texts ....Liturgical texts and practices in the ancient world. This project aims to reconstruct the liturgical life of one of the most diverse and influential religious traditions across Eurasia, from Roman Egypt to early modern China: the Manichaeans. It investigates cultural adaptation, chronological development and unity of practice in a deeper manner that helps support the discipline of religious studies more generally. It expects to generate new knowledge through the critical editing of complex texts and the employment of emergent methodologies for an integrated, holistic understanding of community literatures in terms of lived religion. Expected outcomes are advances to methodology and the profiling of one aspect of the ancient world.Read moreRead less
Empires of honour: violence and virtue in colonial societies, 1750-1850. The moral sentiments and moral practices of any society depend on how that society understands honour. This project will show how different concepts of honour clashed or were recreated through global movements of people in the age of empire, and investigate the enduring effects of such contests in the colonial societies of the India-Pacific region.
Evolving landscapes of our early South African ancestors. This project aims to reconstruct the early evolution of our genus, from 2.6 to 1.8 million years ago. This was a time of faunal and environmental change, the extinction of apelike human ancestors (Australopithecus), the speciation of a specialised human genus, Paranthropus, and the origin of our own genus, Homo. This project will study South African cave sites, the surrounding karst, and the oldest known Homo ergaster fossil to model chan ....Evolving landscapes of our early South African ancestors. This project aims to reconstruct the early evolution of our genus, from 2.6 to 1.8 million years ago. This was a time of faunal and environmental change, the extinction of apelike human ancestors (Australopithecus), the speciation of a specialised human genus, Paranthropus, and the origin of our own genus, Homo. This project will study South African cave sites, the surrounding karst, and the oldest known Homo ergaster fossil to model changing dietary patterns and landscape use by hominins. This project expects to reconstruct the early evolution of our genus and to address how species reacted to changing environmental conditions and increasing aridity.Read moreRead less
Personal liberty, British identity and surveillance in the antipodes, 1780s - 1830s. By studying surveillance in colonial Australia and South Africa, this project will come to a new understanding of what defined British liberty. It will demonstrate that our country's history lies at the centre of one of the most pressing questions of our time-how far do concepts of freedom remain tied to national and cultural particularity?
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130100068
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$344,120.00
Summary
Dwellers on the threshold: the evolution of human behavioural complexity in peripheral regions of southern Africa. This project will clarify the causes and contexts under which Homo sapiens evolved and began to display our species-defining behavioural complexity through an analysis of archaeological sites located on the fringes of southern Africa's arid interior. The project will significantly enhance understandings of the behavioural evolution of our species.