Alan Rumsey, BA, MA, PhD (Chicago)

Professor, School of Culture, History & Language

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

• Sung Tales from the Papua New Guinea Highlands: Studies in Form, Meaning and Social Context. Canberra: ANU E Press. (Coedited with Don Niles). 2011
• Lingual and cultural wholes and fields. In Otto, Ton and Bubant, Nils (eds.) Experiments in Holism: Theory and Practice in Anthropology. Oxford: Blackwells. Pp. 145-171, 2010.
• 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

Head, Department of Anthropology, CAP, ANU, 2011-11; 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, Kamali and Yamatji Land Councils, 1998-2002, 2010; elected to Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2004; Vice President of Australian Anthropology Society, 2007-9, President 2010-11.