Dr Yasmine Musharbash

since July 2009: Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney

Feb - July 2009: Anthropologist, Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority

2004 - 2008: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Western Australia.

2003-2004: Anthropologist, Torres Strait Regional Authority.

1999 - 2003: PhD Scholar, Australian National University.

1997: European Summer School in Anthropology, Copenhagen University

1991 - 1997: MA in Social Anthropology and English, Freie Universität Berlin

1993/4 Social Anthropology and Koorie Studies, Monash University

Research

Since 1994, I have been undertaking annual research trips to the remote Aboriginal settlement of Yuendumu in central Australia, home to up to 1,000 Warlpiri people and about 100 non-Indigenous service providers. I have conducted participant observation-based fieldwork with Warlpiri people in their camps, in Alice Springs, out bush and in a number of other settlements on a range of topics including: sociality, everyday life, domestic space, continuity and change, boredom, youth and inter-generational relations, fear, and so forth.

I have also undertaken non-academic research in central Australia, including Native Title and heritage protection work, consultancies into fire practices, child-rearing, work attitudes, as well as liaison work for the “voices from the heart of the nation” project between Warlpiri Media, Reconciliation Australia and The Australian (News Ltd.). And, I have undertaken Native Title research for land and sea claims in Torres Strait.

In 2008, I completed a four-year postdoc on ‘boredom’. Since then, I have worked on the anthropology of sleep, and further pursued my interests in the anthropology of emotion, comparative anthropology, and research into Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations.

Research Interests

• Indigenous Australia, especially central Australia and Torres Strait.
• Warlpiri Studies.
• Anthropology of the everyday.
• Anthropology of time, space, and place.
• Sociality, kinship, personhood.
• Anthropology of emotions and of the body.
• Indigenous/Non-Indigenous relations.
• Childhood, youth, gender and inter-generational relations.
• TSI relations to the sea

Selected publications

Musharbash, Y. 2011. Warungka: Becoming and Un-becoming a Warlpiri Person, in Growing Up in Central Australia: New Anthropological Studies of Aboriginal Childhood and Adolescence edited by Ute Eickelkamp. Pp. 63-81. New York, Berghahn.

Musharbash, Y. and Marcus Barber (eds.) 2011. Ethnography and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge. Essays in Honour of Nicolas Peterson. Canberra, ANU EPress. http://epress.anu.edu.au/ethnography_citation.html

Musharbash, Y. 2011. Nic’s Gift: Turning Ethnographic Data into Knowledge, in Ethnography and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge. Essays in Honour of Nicolas Peterson, edited by Y. Musharbash and M. Barber. Pp. 1-14. Canberra, ANU EPress.

Musharbash, Y. 2010. Marriage, love magic, and adultery: Warlpiri relationships as seen by three generations of anthropologists. Oceania 80(3):272-288.

Musharbash, Y. 2010. 'Only Whitefella take that road': Culture seen through the Intervention at Yuendumu. In Culture crisis. Anthropology and politics in Aboriginal Australia, edited by J. Altman and M. Hinkson (eds.). Pp. 212-225. Sydney, University of New South Wales Press.

Musharbash, Y. 2010. Warlpiri Fears/Whitefella Fears: Ways of Being in Central Australia Seen through an Emotion. Emotion, Space and Society 3:95-102.

Musharbash, Y. 2009. Yuendumu Everyday. Contemporary Life in a remote Aboriginal Settlement. Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra. http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/asp/aspbooks/yuendumueveryday.html

Katie Glaskin, Victoria Burbank, Yasmine Musharbash and Myrna Tonkinson (eds.), 2008. Mortality, Mourning and Mortuary Practices in Indigenous Australia. Ashgate, Farnham.

Musharbash, Y. 2008. Sorry business is Yapa way: Warlpiri mortuary rituals as embodied practice, in Mortality, Mourning and Mortuary Practices in Indigenous Australia, edited by Katie Glaskin et al. Pp. 21-36. Ashgate, Aldershot.

Carty, J. and Y. Musharbash. 2008. You've got to be joking: Asserting the analytical value of humour and laughter in contemporary anthropology, in Musharbash, Y. and J. Carty (eds.). "You've got to be joking!" Anthropological Forum, 18(3):209-17.

Musharbash, Y. 2008. Perilous Laughter. Examples from Yuendumu, Central Australia, in Musharbash, Y. and J. Carty (eds.). 2008. "You've got to be joking!" Anthropological Forum, 18(3):271-77.

Musharbash, Y. 2007. Boredom, Time, and Modernity: An Example from Remote Aboriginal Australia. American Anthropologist 109:307-17.

Musharbash, Y. 2004. Red bucket for red cordial, green bucket for the green cordial: on the logic and logistics of Warlpiri birthday parties. TAJA 15(1): 12-22.

Musharbash, Y 2011[2003]. Digital Thesis: Warlpiri sociality: an ethnography of the spatial and temporal dimensions of everyday life in a Central Australian aboriginal settlement. PhD Thesis, ANU. https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/8041