Biography summary
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.
Research interests
Museums and repatriation; Australian Aboriginal ceremony; Ethnographic collections; Interculturality; Aboriginal song and ceremony; History of anthropology.
Affiliations
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
Knowledge areas
Museum studies, ethnographic collections, history of Australian anthropology, Arandic tangible and intangible culture, Aboriginal history.
Awards
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
Projects
Anmatyerr Shields, Songs and Ceremonies: A Heritage Project for Community and Nation (Indigenous Languages and Arts)
After the Return: Understanding Aboriginal Engagements with Cultural Collections. (Australian Research Council).
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)
Publications
'Factotum and friend': Anthropologists, informants and ethnographic exchange in central Australia
J Gibson
(2022), Vol. 33, pp. 214-242, History and Anthropology, C1
Aboriginal secret-sacred objects, their values and future prospects
Jason Gibson
(2021), pp. 103-122, Museums, Societies and the Creation of Value, London, Eng., B1
Ceremony Men Making Ethnography and the Return of the Strehlow Collection
Jason GIBSON
(2020), Albany, N.Y., A1
Deciphering Arrernte Archives: The Intermingling of Textual and Living Knowledge
Jason Gibson, Shaun Angeles, Joel Liddle
(2020), pp. 29-45, Archival returns : Central Australia and beyond, Sydney, N.S.W., B1
Cultivating the "Proletarian Outlook": Towards a History of the Left in Central Australia, 1920-75
Jason Gibson
(2020), Vol. 118, pp. 55-81, LABOUR HISTORY, C1
The last Jeraeil of Gippsland: Rediscovering an aboriginal ceremonial site
J Gibson, R Mullet
(2020), Vol. 67, pp. 551-577, Ethnohistory, C1
Returning Recordings of Songs That Persist: The Anmatyerr Traditions of Anmanty and Akiw
Jason Gibson
(2019), Vol. 18, pp. 65-89, Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond, Sydney, N.S.W., B1
J Gibson
(2019), Vol. 25, pp. 537-552, International journal of heritage studies, Abingdon, Eng., C1
J Gibson
(2019), Vol. 34, pp. 240-256, Museum Management and Curatorship, C1
Conversations on the Frontier: Finding the Dialogic in Nineteenth-century Anthropological Archives
J Gibson, H Gardner
(2019), Vol. 88, pp. 47-65, History Workshop Journal, C1
J Gibson, L Hercus
(2018), Vol. 42, pp. 175-210, Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia, Stepney, S.Aust., C1
Listening to the Anmatyerr Song Recordings of T.G.H. Strehlow
Jason Gibson
(2018), Vol. 41, pp. 3-15, The Artefact, Melbourne, Vic., C1
'Only the best is good enough for eternity': revisiting the ethnography of T. G. H. Strehlow
J Gibson
(2017), pp. 243-271, German Ethnography in Australia, Canberra, A.C.T., B1
New possum found!: Photographic influences on Anmatyerr art
J Gibson, J Kean
(2016), Vol. 9, pp. 1-20, electronic Melbourne art journal, Melbourne, Vic., C1-1
J Gibson
(2015), Vol. 85, pp. 165-182, Oceania, Chichester, Eng., C1-1
Outback palms: Aboriginal myth meets DNA analysis
D Bowman, J Gibson, T Kondo
(2015), Vol. 520, pp. 33-33, Nature, London, Eng., C1
J Gibson, P Batty
(2014), Vol. 5, pp. 29-48, Corpora ethnographica online Strategien der Digitalisierung kultureller Archive und ihrer Präsentation im Internet, Münster, Germany, B1-1
Addressing the Arrernte: FJ Gillen's 1896 Engwura speech
J Gibson
(2013), pp. 57-72, Australian Aboriginal studies, Acton, A.C.T., C1-1
'The ablest Australian anthropologists': two early anthropologists and Oxford
A Petch, J Gibson
(2013), Vol. 5, pp. 60-85, Journal of the anthropological society of Oxford, Oxford, Eng., C1-1
Funded Projects at Deakin
Australian Competitive Grants
Howitt & Fison's anthropology: using new methods to reveal hidden riches
A/Prof Helen Gardner, Dr Rachel Hendery, Dr Stephen Morey, Dr Patrick McConvell, Dr Timothy Pilbrow, Mr Paul Paton, Dr Christina Eira, Phillip Batty, Ms Mary Morris, Dr Jason Gibson
ARC Linkage - Projects
- 2021: $18,181
- 2019: $75,765
- 2018: $145,564
- 2017: $150,193
- 2016: $61,528
Collecting at the Crossroads: Anthropology, Art & Cultural Change (1939-85)
Dr Jason Gibson, Mr Alistair Paterson, Prof John Carty, Ms Carly Lane
ARC Linkage - Projects
- 2023: $19,552
- 2022: $220,042
- 2021: $191,823
After the return: Understanding Re-engagements with Aboriginal Collections
Dr Jason Gibson
ARC DECRA - Discovery Early Career Researcher Award
- 2023: $31,753
- 2022: $148,444
Anmatyerr Shields, Songs and Ceremonies: a heritage project for community and nation.
Dr Jason Gibson
DITRD&C Indigenous Languages and Arts (ILA) Program
- 2022: $98,200
Other Public Sector Funding
Howitt & Fison's anthropology: using new methods to reveal hidden riches
A/Prof Helen Gardner, Dr Rachel Hendery, Dr Stephen Morey, Dr Patrick McConvell, Dr Timothy Pilbrow, Mr Paul Paton, Dr Christina Eira, Phillip Batty, Ms Mary Morris, Dr Jason Gibson
Museum Victoria
- 2019: $10,000
- 2018: $10,000
- 2017: $10,000
Collecting at the Crossroads: Anthropology, Art & Cultural Change (1939-85)
Dr Jason Gibson, Mr Alistair Paterson, Prof John Carty, Ms Carly Lane
South Australian Museum
- 2022: $12,000
Using Indigenous Frameworks to Bring Poorly Provenanced International Indigenous Collections Home.
Dr Jason Gibson
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Indigenous Research Exchange Grant
- 2022: $250,017
Industry and Other Funding
Returning the Birrundudu Drawings
Dr Jason Gibson
Berndt Research Foundation
- 2019: $14,157
Supervisions
No completed student supervisions to report