Chris Ballard, BA (Hons), PhD (ANU)
Fellow, Division of Pacific and Asian History

Email: chris.ballard@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

My current interests revolve around indigenous Melanesian historicities - their transformation through cross-cultural encounters; their representation through various media, including film and fiction; and their articulation with contemporary challenges such as land reform, large natural resource projects, and cultural heritage management planning. I am also engaged, together with Bronwen Douglas, in an ARC Discovery Project on "European Naturalists and the Constitution of Human Difference in Oceania". Publications under preparation include an edited collection on the history of racial science in Oceania, and a monograph on violence and first contact in the New Guinea Highlands.

Research Interests

Resource ownership and land rights; violence and human rights; racism, concepts of "race" and colonial encounters; social and agricultural transformations; narrative and memory; sacred geography; theory in the disciplines of history, anthropology, archaeology and geography; regional interests in eastern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.

Key Publications

• Fluid Ontologies: Myth, Ritual and Philosophy in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, Bergin & Garvey, Westport, Connecticut and London, 1998 (ed. with Laurence R. Goldman).
• Agricultural Transformation and Intensification. Special Issue of Asia-Pacific Viewpoint, 42(2/3), 2001 (ed. with Bryant Allen and Elanna Lowes).
• Race for the Snow Mountains: photography in the early exploration of Netherlands New Guinea, Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, 2001 (with Steven Vink and Anton Ploeg) .
• The Sweet Potato in Oceania, Sydney: Oceania, 2005 (ed. with Paula Brown, Mike Bourke and Tracy Harwood).

Career Highlights

UNCEN-ANU Baseline Studies Project at the Freeport mine, Irian Jaya (1996-98); Visiting positions as Directeur de Recherche, CNRS, Marseille (1999-2000), and as Directeur de Recherche, EHESS, Paris (2001); nomination for World Heritage status of Chief Roi Mata’s Domain on behalf of the Republic of Vanuatu (2007).