Alan Rumsey, BA, MA, PhD (Chicago)
Senior Fellow, Department of Anthropology
Email: alan.rumsey@anu.edu.au
Biographical Statement
I am currently involved in a collaborative research project on '
Social Cognition and Language'. Other ongoing projects include '
Chanted Tales from Highland New Guinea', and studies of infant and child language socialization, and of electoral and local politics, all in the Ku Waru region of Highland Papua New Guinea.
Research Interests
Melanesia; Aboriginal Australia; discourse; social identity; linguistic anthropology; indigenes and the state.
Key Publications
- Rhetoric, Truth, and the work of trope. In Strecker, Ivo and Tyler, Stephen (eds.) Culture and Rhetoric (Studies in Rhetoric and Culture, Vol. 1), Oxford: Berghahn. Pp. 117-49, 2009.
- Musical, poetic and linguistic form in 'Tom Yaya sung narratives from Papua New Guinea'. Anthropological Linguistics 49:237-82, 2007
- Language, desire and the ontogenesis of intersubjectivity. Language and Communication 23:169-18, 2003.
- (ed. with James Weiner) Emplaced Myth: Space, Narrative, and Knowledge in Australian Aboriginal and Papua New Guinea Societies/, Honolulu, University of Hawai'i Press, 2001.
- Agency, personhood and the 'I' of discourse in the Pacific and beyond', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 6, 101-115, 2000.
- (with Francesca Merlan) Ku Waru: Language and Segmentary Politics in the Western Nebilyer Valley, Papua New Guinea, Cambridge University Press, 1991 (Paperback edition 2006).
Career Highlights
Lecturer and Senior Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney, 1979-1995; Co-editor, review editor and editorial board member, Oceania 1985-; Advisory Editor, Current Anthropology 2000-2002; Editorial board member, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 1999-; Anthropological Consultant to Northern Land Council, 1980-1993, and to the Kimberley and Kamali Land Councils, 1998-2002; elected to Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2004; Vice President of Australian Anthropology Society, 2007-9, President-Elect, 2010
