South Australian Museum - North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia 5000

Much of this material was poorly documented and a major thrust of current research is to find out more about these collections and the collectors. This involves archival research, fieldwork using photographs of objects – and even digitised film on a laptop – to retrieve ethnographic information, and co-operative research with other museums.

Sultan of Johore’s house and ship models

Waite's New Ireland malangan on display

Recent and current research includes:

• the Sultan of Johore 1887 collection from South-east Asia;
• the Theodore Bevan 1887 collection from the Papuan Gulf;
• the Reverend William Gray 1895 collection from the New Hebrides (Vanuatu);
• the Irene Badcock 1909 collection from the Congo;
• the Reverend E.G. Neil 1909 collection from Samoa;
• the William Hoggarth 1912-13 collection from Chiu Chiu in Chile;
• the 1914-16 Pacific photographs of Ernest Sterne Usher;
• the Harry Balfour Ogilvy 1917 collection from the Bismarck Archipelago;
• the Edgar Waite 1918 collections from New Ireland and New Guinea;
• the Kenneth Thomas 1930s collection from northern New Guinea;
• the Reverend Harold Freund 1940s collection from the New Guinea highlands;
• the 1950s Norman and Shiela Draper collection from the Baliem Valley of West Papua;
• the 1960s Reverend Ralph Lawton collection from the Trobriand Islands;
• the 1968-9 Graeme Pretty and Tony Crawford collection from the Southern Highlands of New Guinea.

Other research includes an ARC-Linkage project: an analysis of around 10,000 objects in museums worldwide, deriving from the upper Sepik and central New Guinea regions and a survey and analysis of slit-gongs of Papua New Guinea.

Recently completed projects include involvement in Shields of Melanesia, a published survey of warshields of Melanesia and Living Spirits with Fixed Abodes, a catalogue of the Masterpieces Exhibition of the Papua New Guinea National Museum.