I am currently leading a major collaborative research project on multimodal aspects of children's language socialization in cross-cultural perspective. Other recent projects have included an interdisciplinary comparative one on verbal art which resulted in the volume Sung Tales from the Papua New Guinea Highlands. (For further details including a CV and most of my publications in downloadable form, search me on academia.edu)

Career highlights

Lecturer and Senior Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney, 1978-1995; Research Fellow (1996-2001) , Senior Research Fellow (2001-2010), Professor (2010-2019), and Professor Emeritus (2019-present), College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University; Co-editor; review editor and editorial board member, Oceania 1985-; Advisory Editor, Current Anthropology 2000-2002; Editorial board member, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 1999-2015, The Australian Journal of Anthropology (TAJA), 2008-, American Ethnologist, 2016-2019; Anthropological Consultant to Northern Land Council, 1980-1993, and to the Kimberley, Kamali and Yamatji Land Councils, 1998-2002, 2010; elected to Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2004; Vice President of Australian Anthropology Society, 2007-9, President 2010-11; ARC DORA Professor, 2013-2016; Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, 2014-2022.

Melanesia; Aboriginal Australia; linguistic anthropology; intersubjectivity, child language socialization, sign languages, multimodal communication, comparative poetics