Profile - Professor Claire Smith
Professor Claire Smith
Research Professor
Department of Archaeology
Flinders University
GPO Box 2100
Adelaide SA 5001
Email: Claire.Smith@flinders.edu.au
Profile Publications
Profile:
Claire Smith was appointmented as a conjoint with the Research Institute for Social Inclusion and Wellbeing (RISIW) during 2008/2009. She is an Associate Professor with the Department of Archaeology at Flinders University, Australia, and President of the World Archaeological Congress , the only archaeological organisation with elected global representation, which is holding its major Congress in Dublin, Ireland, 29th June—4th July, 2008. More Information
Claire Smith completed her PhD in archaeology at the University of New England in 1996. Following this, she was awarded an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship. She was appointed to the faculty at Flinders University in 1998. In 2000-2001 she held a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship, hosted jointly by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum for Natural History and the American University, Washington, D.C. In 2004-2005, she held a visiting appointment with the Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York. She has been a visiting scholar at Lock Haven University, Pennsylvania; Pitzer College, Claremont, California; and the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Most recently, she was an Arts Humanities and Social Sciences Visiting Scholar at the University of Denver.
As President of the World Archaeological Congress, Claire Smith has established a number of projects that build research and teaching capacity in economically disadvantaged countries, including the international refereed journal, Archaeologies, and the Global Libraries and Archaeologists without Borders programs. Claire has established five books series for the World Archaeological Congress and is Head Series Editor for the Indigenous Archaeologies Series, published by Alta Mira Press, and the Global Cultural Heritage Manuals series, published by Springer. She recently submitted a proposal to Blackwell for a new series called Archaeology Engaged.
Claire has won a number of awards relating to social justice and inclusion, including the 2006 Carrick Award for Teaching, National Award, Team Category (with Heather Burke), the Prince of Wales Award, from the Queen’s Trust for Young Australians, and an Australian Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship. From 2004—2008 she was Chair of the South Australian Chapter of the Fulbright Association.
In 2006, Claire was one of six invited specialists who conducted independent evaluations of the Smithsonian Institution’s newly opened National Museum of the American Indian. She is a member of the Public Education Committees of the Australian Archaeological Association and the Society for American Archaeology. She was Senior Editor of the international refereed journal Australian Archaeology from 1997—1999. She is a Regional Correspondent for the eminent British journal Antiquity, and a member of the international editorial boards of the journals Internet Archaeology and Rock Art Research.
Claire Smith has worked closely with the Ngadjuri people in South Australia for ten years and has conducted long-term fieldwork with Aboriginal people in the Katherine East region of the Northern Territory for almost twenty years. In 1991, Phyllis Wiynjorroc, the senior traditional owner of Bagula clan lands, gave her son the name Lamjerroc, after Phyllis’ father.
A current research focus on the Federal intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory arises from her long-term work in this region. She has been actively monitoring the impact of the intervention on Aboriginal communities since June, 2007, and is a founding organiser of the grassroots group‘Women for Wik - Monitoring the Federal Action in the Northern Territory’. She has written a number of submissions to the Territory and Federal governments, providing grassroots feedback on the intervention, suggestions for alleviating the most immediate distress associated with its implementation, and ideas for moving towards policy outcomes that will enhance the wellbeing of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory.
She has a passionate interest in bringing about sustainable, long-term changes in community attitudes to Aboriginal people, particularly through the school curriculum and through enhancing community appreciation of the unique accomplishments of Indigenous Australians. Claire was the instigator, co-ordinator and principal author of the 200 page submission, A Past for all Australians: Archaeology and Australia's National History Curriculum, a proposal to the Australian Federal government to develop the new national curriculum so that it is more socially inclusive of Indigenous knowledges and achievements.
Claire Smith’s international collaborations include the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage project, an international group of archaeologists, Indigenous organizations, lawyers, anthropologists, policy makers, and others which seeks to establish more equitable and successful research and policies through community-based research and the topical exploration of intellectual property issues. In April 2008, this project received an award of $2.5 million from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council's Major Collaborative Research Initiatives program.
Claire Smith has a broad intellectual vision and an inter-disciplinary approach to research, teaching and public engagement. She has undertaken collaborative projects with scholars from cultural studies, history, Indigenous studies, anthropology and theology. In her teaching, she aims to promote student awareness of, and involvement in, social justice issues, especially in Indigenous communities, and ethical globalisation, with a focus on redressing global inequities and building the intellectual richness that comes from inclusion. Her experience with end-users includes the convening of two high quality, community-based international conferences, ‘Indigenous Cultures in an Interconnected World’ (1997), and ‘Cultural Heritage and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property’ (2006), both of which received extensive media coverage, at local, national and international levels.
Since 2004, Claire has given thirteen key-note or dinner addresses, and nine public lectures, in Portugal, England, Canada, the USA, New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Nigeria and Japan. In November, 2008, she will present the Distinguished Lecture for the General Archaeology Division of the American Anthropological Association.
Click here to listen to Claire Smith's interview on 1233 ABC Newcastle with Garth Russell - Indiana Jones & Real Archaeology
Publications
Books
Smith, C.E. & Burke, H.D., 2007. Digging it Up Down Under: A Practical Guide to Doing Archaeology in Australia, New York: Springer.
Book chapters
Smith, C.E. & Jackson, G.T., 2008. The Ethics of Collaboration. Whose Culture? Whose Intellectual Property? Who Benefits?. In Collaboration in Archaeological Practice: Engaging Descendent Communities. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, pp. 171-191.
Smith, C.E., 2008. La supervivencia de las comunidades indígenas / The survival of indigenous communities. In Mundos Tribales. Una vision etnoarqueologica. Valencia: Museu de Prehistoria de Valencia, pp. 92-107.
Burke, H.D. & Smith, C.E., 2008. Perspectives on the Ancient One. In Kennewick Man: Perspectives on the Ancient One. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press, pp. 20-25.
Smith, C.E., 2008. Panache and protocol in Australian Aboriginal art. In Archaeologies of Art. Time, place and identity. Walnut Creek, USA: Left Coast Press, pp. 215-241.
Burke, H.D. & Smith, C.E., 2007. Lectures as usual? Teaching archaeology for fun. In Archaeology to Delight and Instruct: Active Learning in the University Classroom. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press, pp. 11-34.
Burke, H.D. & Smith, C.E., 2007. Seven degrees of archaeology, or diverse ways of interpreting the past. In Archaeology to Delight and Instruct: Active Learning in the University Classroom. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press, pp. 37-44.
Smith, C.E. & Burke, H.D., 2007. The skin game: Teaching to redress stereotypes of Indigenous people. In Archaeology to Delight and Instruct: Active Learning in the University Classroom. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press, pp. 80-101.
Smith, C.E. & O'Donnell, M.E., 2006. Gender and the Disciplinary Culture of Australian Archaeology. In Handbook of Gender in Archaeology. Berkeley, USA: AltaMira Press, pp. 691-732.
Smith, C.E. & Jackson, G.T., 2005. Living and Learning on Aboriginal Lands: Decolonising Archaeology in Practice. In Indigenous Archaeologies: Decolonising Theory and Practice. London, UK: Routledge, pp. 336-349.
August 2008
A Community-Based Review of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (Pdf 3.7 MB)
This is a quantitative and qualitative study of the impact of the Northern Territory Emergency Response on the Aboriginal communities of Barunga, Wugularr, Eva Valley, Kalano, and associated outstations, within the Katherine East region of the Northern Territory. This research presents a range of findings and recommendations, geared towards assisting in delivery of the aims of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) as stated in the Terms of Reference for the NTER Review Board.
23 May 2008
Indy Jones: Archeology's Flawed Hero
Billed as the 'hottest ticket' at this year's Cannes Film Festival, the launch today of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull coincides with National Archaeology Week, which was established to increase public awareness of Australian archaeology and enhance protection of Australia's unique cultural heritage.