Dr Shannon Faulkhead - Researcher Profile

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Address

Monash University
Wellington Road, Clayton

Contact Details

Tel: +61 3 990 53249

Email: Shannon.Faulkhead@monash.edu


Biography

Preserving living heritage

The Monash Country Lines Archive (MCLA) is working with Indigenous communities to assist in preserving and sharing intergenerational knowledge of their history, country lines, songs, stories and language through 3D computer animations. For researchers such as Dr Shannon Faulkhead, MCLA is a powerful tool with which Indigenous Australian communities can share their history and knowledge. 

 

Working with the MCLA is a natural progression for Shannon.

One of her first roles was as a librarian with the Koorie Heritage Trust Inc., an organisation she would later lead as CEO. Her PhD research and early work with Monash was attached to the ARC Linkage project, ‘Trust and Technology: building an archival system for Indigenous oral memory’. And her PhD thesis focused on how narratives of Koorie culture, history and people created from Indigenous knowledge and archival records impact upon community.

Now she and the MCLA team are working in partnership with Indigenous communities to give a visual life to their narratives and history.

MCLA is a team of Monash animators and researchers led by Shannon's colleague Associate Professor John Bradley. John and the team of animators have already collaborated on a series of animations with the Yanyuwa community of northern Australia. Shannon is confident the success of that joint project demonstrates the unique potential of the MCLA program.

"The animations become an archive of image and narratives belonging to specific Country and peoples, such as with the Yanyuwa," Shannon says.

"The animations use the topography of Country in the images, so it is easily recognised by Elders who can then add more information when sharing them with others."

Shannon and the MCLA team have begun discussing the possibilities of the MCLA with Indigenous communities across Australia to see how the MCLA program can work with them in animating their stories. 

The MCLA Program is funded for five years by a grant from the Alan and Elizabeth Finkel Foundation.

For Shannon, the project offers a new approach to partnership research with Indigenous communities.

"I am excited about the project as it is not purely an academic endeavour, but is giving back to communities with real outcomes they can use," Shannon says.

"Working within academia, you often hear of issues that people have had with researchers or government programs where there has been very little outcomes for the community in which the research has been undertaken - this is an opportunity to learn from the past and do things differently.

"This is about creating narratives that communities can be proud of, and maybe shift the shame-blame dichotomy that is sometimes associated with Indigenous issues."

 

Qualifications

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Institution: Monash University
Year awarded: 2009
GRAD DIP OF NATURAL & CULTURAL HERITAGE INTERPRET
Institution: Deakin University
Year awarded: 1998
GRAD CERT OF APPLIED SCI (ENV & HERITAGE INTER)
Institution: Deakin University
Year awarded: 1997
ARTS (LIBRARIANSHIP)
Institution: Ballarat University College
Year awarded: 1991

Publications

Books

McKemmish, S.M., Burstein, F.V., Faulkhead, S., Fisher, J.L., Gilliland, A.J., McLoughlin, I.P., Wilson, R. (eds), 2012, Information, Communication & Society - Special Issue: Working with Communities: Community Partnership Research in Information Technology, Management and Systems, Routledge, Abingdon England.

Faulkhead, S., Berg, J. (eds), 2010, Power and the Passion: Our Ancestors Return Home, Koorie Heritage Trust Inc, Melbourne Vic Australia.

Book Chapters

Faulkhead, S., Russell, L., Singh, D.M., McKemmish, S.M., 2007, Is community research possible within the Western academic tradition?, in Researching with Communities: Grounded perspectives on engaging communities in research, eds Andy Williamson and Ruth DeSouza, Muddy Creek Press, New Zealand, pp. 39-55.

Journal Articles

Evans, J.E., Faulkhead, S., Manaszewicz, R., Thorpe, K., 2012, Bridging communities: Foundations for the interchange of ideas, Information Communication and Society [P], vol 15, issue 7, Routledge, Abingdon England, pp. 1055-1080.

Adams, K., Faulkhead, S., 2012, This is not a guide to indigenous research partnerships, Information Communication and Society [P], vol 15, issue 7, Routledge, United Kingdom, pp. 1016-1036.

McKemmish, S.M., Burstein, F.V., Faulkhead, S., Fisher, J.L., Gilliland, A.J., McLoughlin, I.P., Wilson, R., 2012, Working with communities: Community partnership research in information technology, management and systems [Guest Editor's introduction], Information Communication and Society [P], vol 5, issue 7, Routledge, Abingdon England, pp. 985-990.

McKemmish, S., Faulkhead, S., Russell, L., 2011, Distrust in the archive: Reconciling records, Archival Science [P], vol 11, issue 3-4, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht Netherlands, pp. 211-239.

Anderson, K., Becker, S., Joel, B., Caswell, M., Chu, I., Daniels, M., Faulkhead, S., Gilliland, A., Greer, A., Howard, T., Jacobsen, T., Guerra, F., Kim, D., Allison, K., Lau, A., McKemmish, S., Pearlstein, E., Pendse, L., Punzalan, R., Shepherd, E., Steele, J., White, K., Willer, M., Wong, V., 2011, Educating for the archival multiverse, American Archivist [P], vol 74, Society of American Archivists, United States, pp. 69-101.

McKemmish, S., Faulkhead, S., Iacovino, L.M., Thorpe, K., 2010, Australian Indigenous knowledge and the archives: Embracing multiple ways of knowing and keeping, Archives & Manuscripts [P], vol 38, issue 1, The Australian Society of Archivists, Virginia Qld Australia, pp. 27-50.

Faulkhead, S., 2009, Connecting through records: narratives of Koorie Victoria, Archives & Manuscripts [P], vol 37, issue 2, The Australian Society of Archivists, Australia, pp. 60-88.

Ross, F., McKemmish, S.M., Faulkhead, S., 2006, Indigenous knowledge and the archives: designing trusted archival systems for Koorie communities, Archives and Manuscripts, vol 34, issue 2, Australian Society of Archivists Inc., Dickson ACT Australia, pp. 112-151.

Faulkhead, S., Evans, J., Morgan, H., 2005, Is technology enough? Developing archival information systems in community environments, ESARBICA Journal [P], vol 24, International Council on Archives, South Africa, pp. 88-113.

Grants

Title:
Indigenous people working with Indigenous Knowledge sources: Developing an International network to connect innovative projects relating to Indigenous peoples, Archives, Libraries, Museums, Keeping Pl.
Investigators:
Faulkhead, S, Thorpe, K
Funding:
(2011 - 2015). National Archives of Australia.
Title:
Koorie archiving: Community and records working together.
Investigators:
Faulkhead, S, Russell, L, McKemmish, S
Funding:
(2009 - 2013). Australian Research Council (ARC).
Title:
Rebirth: Revitalisation of Indigenous Victorian Women's Knowledge.
Investigators:
Faulkhead, S
Funding:
(2012 - 2016). Victorian Womens Trust Ltd.
Title:
Trust and technology: Building archival systems for Indigenous oral memory.
Investigators:
Russell, L, Johanson, G, Schauder, D, McKemmish, S, Heazlewood, J
Funding:
(2003 - 2007). Australian Research Council (ARC).
(2003 - 2007). Australian Society of Archivists.
(2003 - 2007). Koorie Heritage Trust.
(2003 - 2007). Public Record Office Victoria.
(2003 - 2007). Victorian Koorie Records Taskforce.
(2008 - 2012). Public Record Office Victoria.