Dr Jason Gibson

Jason has worked extensively with Aboriginal custodians throughout Australia on history, museum, and heritage related projects and conducted detailed fieldwork in central Australia for the past 15 years. His award winning book is Ceremony Men: Making Ethnography and the Return of the Strehlow Collection (2020) examines the making of one of Australia’s most important anthropological collections and its relevance to Anmatyerr and Arrernte people.

Jason has worked as a consultant to a number of government and non-government agencies, and also as a Repatriation Curator with the Melbourne Museum’s First Peoples Department and has taught Indigenous Studies at Monash University. His research explores cross-cultural approaches to custodianship, the history of anthropology, Indigenous cultural heritage management and Central Australian song and ceremonial traditions.

He is the Lead Chief Investigator of the Collecting at the Crossroads: Anthropology, Art and Cultural Change (1939-85) Australian Research Council Linkage Project. This project applies current scholarship on museum collecting practices, art and anthropology to produce a better understanding of one of Australia’s most significant, yet little known, collections of Aboriginal art and culture —the Berndt Museum collection.

Museums and repatriation; Australian Aboriginal ceremony; Ethnographic collections; Interculturality; Aboriginal song and ceremony; History of anthropology.

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

Council for Museum Anthropology

American Anthropological Association

Australian Historical Association

Australian Anthropological Society

Honorary Research Associate, Museums Victoria

Honorary Research Associate, University of Western Australia

Museum studies, ethnographic collections, history of Australian anthropology, Arandic tangible and intangible culture, Aboriginal history.

Sounds of Central Australia: Historic Recordings of Aboriginal Song

'First Contact' Depicted in a Boomerang by Aboriginal Artist

Obituary for Dr Luise Hercus

Forgotten names for Melbourne area

2023: Mid Career Researcher Award, Alfred Deakin Institute

2022: Australian Historical Association W.K. Hancock Book Prize

2021: Shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award

2021: Vice-Chancellor's Early Career Researcher Award for Career Excellence

2021: Council of Museum Anthropology Book Award 

2017: Monash University Historical Studies PhD Prize 

2017: Archaeological and Anthropological Society of Victoria’s Alpha Prize

After the Return: Understanding Aboriginal Engagements with Cultural Collections. (Australian Research Council).

Anmatyerr Shields, Songs and Ceremonies: A Heritage Project for Community and Nation (Indigenous Languages and Arts)

Collecting at the Crossroads: Anthropology, Art and Cultural Change (1939-85) (Australian Research Council Linkage Project)

Returning the Birrundudu Drawings: anthropology and the emergence ofAboriginal art (Berndt Research Foundation)

Using Indigenous Frameworks to Bring Poorly Provenanced International Indigenous Collections Home (with AIATSIS)