Ross Chadwick

Head of Department, Anthropology and Archaeology

Anthropology and Archaeology

BSc, Grad Dip MusStudies

Ross Chadwick (standing)

Contact

(08) 9212 3721 ross.chadwick@museum.wa.gov.au

Research


Currently enrolled in a Doctor of Philosophy at Curtin University. The anthropology of sport: my current thesis research is focused on the Aboriginal experience of cricket in Western Australia. My wider interests in this area include the ways in which people use sport to creating meaning and identity and how it is used to negotiate and frame relationships within and between different fields of sociality.

The development of museum collections: this interest focuses on the ways museum collections form and the kinds of things these collections say about their source communities, the collectors and consumers and the broader role that museums play as cultural repositories and keepers of a community’s heritage.

The history of Anthropology in the Western Australian Museum: this topic encompasses element of the project above in that it looks at the way that the Museum’s ethnographic collections were created. 

Collections:

Assists the Registrar in the management of the Department’s Australian Aboriginal collections and other Departmental staff in the care and management of the Overseas Cultures collections.

Manages the Museum’s Return of Indigenous Cultural Property (RICP) that seeks to return Aboriginal Ancestral Remains and significant secret/sacred objects back to their relevant community.

Responsibility for the management and planning of the Department’s Collection Management Information System.

WAM Committees

(i) Member of the Museum’s Information Services Committee
(ii) Fire Warden for the Collections and Research Centre

Selected Publications

  • Chadwick, R.R. 2008 “Your Obedient Servant”: the John Tunney collection at the Western Australian Museum. In The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections. N. Peterson, L. Allen and L. Hamby (eds). MUP
  • Chadwick, R.R. 2002 One for All and All for One? Collection management databases at the Western Australian Museum. ARC Journal, 2002