Dr Yasmine Musharbash

Lecturer

Room 169, RC Mills Building A26
+61 2 9114 1279


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.

Having just completed a four-year postdoc on ‘boredom’, I have become interested in the anthropology of emotion and plan future research into the emotions generally and fear especially, hopefully from a comparative perspective.

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 and the anthropology of emotions.
• Childhood, youth, gender and inter-generational relations.
• Indigenous/Non-Indigenous relations.
• TSI relations to the sea

Selected publications

Musharbash, Y. 2008. Yuendumu Everyday. Contemporary Life in a remote Aboriginal Settlement. Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.

Musharbash, Y. and J. Carty (eds.). 2008. "You've got to be joking!" Anthropological Forum, 18(3) Special Issue.

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 Glaskinet al. Ashgate, Farnham.

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) Special Issue.

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.