Richard Eves, BA (Adel), PhD (ANU)
Fellow, State Society and Governance in Melanesia

Email: richard.eves@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

I am an anthropologist with extensive field and consultancy experience in Papua New Guinea. Now working mainly on a book on Pentecostalism in New Ireland, I aim to show the effects that this form of fundamentalist Christianity is having on cultural and social structures, and ultimately its effects on governmentality. The book looks especially at changes in the areas of gender, personhood, community and health.

The range of my publications covers Melanesian ethnography, medical anthropology, nineteenth century anthropological and racial thought, and religion and colonialism in the Pacific. I have been awarded two ARC fellowships, a research fellowship at Cambridge University and another at the University of East Anglia.

Working as a consultant for two AusAID-funded projects in Papua New Guinea, I produced culturally appropriate health promotion materials for the Department of Health, and defined the priorities for social science research into HIV/AIDS. My recent report: Exploring the Role of Men and Masculinities in Papua New Guinea in the 21st century: How to Address Violence in Ways that Generate Empowerment for Both Men and Women, was produced for Caritas (Australia).

Research Interests

Melanesian ethnography (especially religion and social/cultural change); medical anthropology (especially international public health and HIV/AIDS); gender (especially masculinity); and gender-based violence.

Key Publications

• (ed. with Leslie Butt) Making Sense of AIDS: Culture, Sexuality, and Power in Melanesia Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008.
• The Magical Body: Power, Fame and Meaning in a Melanesian Society, Harwood Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, 1998.
• Bad Colonists: The South Sea Letters of Vernon Lee Walker and Louis Becke, (with Nicholas Thomas) Duke University Press, Durham, 1999.
• Moral Reform and Miraculous Cures: Christian Healing and AIDS in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. In Leslie Butt and Richard Eves (eds) Making Sense of AIDS: Culture, Sexuality and Power in Melanesia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008.
• ‘Money, Mayhem and the Beast: Narratives of the World’s End from New Ireland’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9, 527-47, 2003.
• ‘AIDS and Apocalypticism: Interpretations of the Epidemic in Papua New Guinea’, Culture, Health and Sexuality 5, 249-64, 2003.

Career Highlights

1988 The David Murray scholarship prize for best honours graduate of the Faculty of Arts, University of Adelaide; 1996 Visiting Research Fellow, Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia; 1997-2000 ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow; 1999-2000 Smuts Visiting Fellow in Commonwealth Studies, Cambridge University; 2004- ARC QEII Research Fellowship.