Dr Diana Young

Research Fellow

T: ( 02 ) 612 59879

F: ( 02 ) 624 80054
E: diana.young@anu.edu.au

start date: January 01, 2009
end date: December 31, 2009

Research School of Humanities
College of Arts and Social Sciences

Qualifications:

2001       Doctorate in Social Anthropology; ‘The Colours of Things; Memory, Materiality and an Anthropology of the Senses in North Western South Australia’, Department of Anthropology, University College London.

1994       M.A. with Distinction, Anthropology of Art, Department of Anthropology, University College London. Thesis ‘Colour and sense in the islands of the Kula ring’

Short biography:

Dr Diana Young is currently a Research Fellow in the Research School of Humanities at the Australian National University. She is an experienced Social Anthropologist specialising in material and visual culture, particularly the role of colour and other senses.

Diana has worked with Anangu - Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people - in the Western Desert of Australia since 1996. She has worked on Polynesia and Melanesian material culture in museum collections and carried out field work in the UK, Tonga and New Zealand.

Diana first trained as an architect and worked in the construction industry for a decade where she specialised in refurbishment. She also studied film making (video editing and shooting) in London in the 1980s and more recently at ANU she has begun digital film making.

Research Interests:

Material and visual culture especially environment and consumption, museums and collections, all aspects of contemporary art, art history, film and photography, design and architecture,

Current Research Projects:

Diana is currently working on an Australia Council funded exhibition charting the artistic career of important Ernabella artist Nyukana Baker to be held at the Jam Factory in Adelaide during August 2009. She is also working on the sixtieth anniversary book of Ernabella Arts with Ernabella artists. This publication has received funding from the Gordon Darling Foundation.

Selected Publications:

Books and Monographs

2001   

Art on a String. Threaded objects from the Western Desert and Arnhem Land’ with L. Hamby, Object Gallery, Australian Centre for Craft and Design, and Centre for Cross Cultural Research, ANU.

Edited volumes

2009   

 ‘Re-materialising Colour’, Sean Kingston Publishing, Wantage, UK.

Chapters in books

2006   

‘The Colours of Things’ in The Handbook of Material Culture, eds. P. Spyer, C. Tilley, S. Kuechler, W. Keane, Sage Publications, pp 173-185.

2001   ‘The Life and Death of Cars. Private cars on the Pitjantjatjara Lands, South     Australia’ in Car Cultures, ed. Daniel Miller, Berg Publishers, pp 35-59.

Journal articles

2006               ‘Water as country in the Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands’ in World Views; Environment, Culture, Religion, eds. A. Garner and V. Strang, vol 10, no 2, pp 239-258.

2005   ‘The smell of green-ness; cultural synaesthesia in the Western Desert’ in Etnofoor, XVIII/1/2005 eds Regina Bendix and Donald Brenneis, pp 61-77.

2004   

’The Material Value of Colour; the Estate Agent’s Tale’ in Home Cultures, Berg, Oxford, vol 1, no 1, pp 5-22.

Disciplines:

Activities:

SELECTED EXHIBITION CURATION AND DESIGN

2001 with Louise Hamby of ‘Art on a String. Threaded objects from the Central Desert and Arnhem Land’. Object Gallery - Australian Centre for Craft and Design, Circular Quay, Sydney. Exhibition touring Australian state galleries 2002-2004 through Visions of Australia.

1998 Consultant Curator for Ernabella Arts Inc. ‘Warka Irititja munu Kuwari Kutu. Work from the Past and the Present, A Celebration of Fifty Years of Ernabella Arts’. Tandanya, Adelaide, South Australia.