Woman Hamilton, Annette (1945 - )

Born
1945
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation
Anthropologist

Written by Ann Standish, The University of Melbourne

Annette Hamilton is a leading cultural and visual anthropologist whose research has been based in both remote Australia and in Asia.

Hamilton was born in Sydney in 1945. After schooling at North Sydney Girls High and then PLC Orange, she attended the University of Sydney, were she gained a BA, followed by an MA and a PhD in cultural anthropology. Between 1968 and 1985, she worked with Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory and remote South Australia. Her fieldwork research led to the book Nature and Nurture: Child-Rearing in North Central Arnhem Land (1981), as well as numerous other publications. She also appeared as an expert witness in a number of land rights cases. Since 1985, her research interests have shifted to include visual anthropology of the media in Southeast Asia an area in which she has become a key practitioner. Much of her recent work has been on cinema in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, with her current (2013) project focusing on political cinema and history in Cambodia. Her recent papers and book chapters are concerned with the films of Rithy Panh and emerging young Khmer filmmakers. She is currently writing a monograph on Film and the Khmer Rouge.

Hamilton taught at Macquarie University where she was Head of Department of Anthropology at from 1983 to 1998 and Head of Division of Society Culture Media and Philosophy from 1999 to 2001. Since 2002, she has been at the University of New South Wales, where she was Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences from 2002 to 2006 and is now Professor in the School of Arts and Media. She is a member of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, a Senior Fellow of the Australian Anthropological Society and a Member of the Asian Studies Association (US).

Published Resources

Books

  • Berry, Chris; Hamilton, Annette; and Jaymanne, Laleen, The Filmmaker and the Prostitute: Dennis O'Rourke's The Good Women of Bangkok, Power Publications, Sydney, New South Wales, 1997. Details
  • Hamilton, Annette, Nature and Nurture: Child-Rearing in North Central Arnhem Land, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, 1981, 183 pp. Details

Online Resources

See also