Dr. Maya Haviland is currently a Translational Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies. She leads the Scaffolding Cultural Co-Creativity project (SCCCP), an international multi-partner action learning project investigating the dynamics of co-creation in diverse organisational and cultural contexts, and developing resources and curriculum to support co-creative practice and practitioners.  

Maya’s research career has spanned a range of topics, specialising in community-led research with Indigenous communities, participatory action research and evaluation, and practice-based research. Her current research is focussed on dynamics of co-creation and cultural collaboration; dynamics of creative innovation with traditional knowledge, and cultural resurgence and resilience through collaborative arts and cultural projects.

Maya is a long-term community development practitioner and facilitator, having worked as consultant in Australia, the Pacific and North America for over 15 years prior to joining the ANU. She has undertaken a range of collaborative research projects with communities in Vanuatu, Mexico, the USA and Australia - especially in the Kimberley region. Her In 2018-2020 Maya was seconded part-time to the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the ANU where she led process of co-design and collaboration with industry, academic and students, including convening the CoDesign Culture Lab in November 2019 and production of the Reimagine STEM podcast. She has facilitated a number of collaborative art and documentary projects in the Kimberley region of North Western Australia, in the USA, Mexico and most recently in Vanuatu. Her photographic and installation works have been exhibited in Australia and internationally. She and her partner Brad Riley produced a documentary about the Vanuatu Cultural Centre’s Fieldworker Network – examining its role in cultural documentation and cultural revival. Her book Side by Side? Community Art and the Challenge of Co-Creativity was published in 2017.

She is currently co-producing a podcast with Nicole Deen called Collaboratory, exploring co-creativity in action with a range of practitioners and disciplines. It is scheduled for release in  2022.

PhD, B. App. Sci (Honors)

•Collaborative anthropology
•Co-creative Institutions
•Indigenous cultures
•Visual anthropology and documentary film
•Community Cultural Development
•Socially-engaged Art, contemporary art
•Art-based collaborative ethnography
•Collaborative Methodologies
•Participatory Research,  (PAR)
•Participatory evaluation
•Photography, installation
•Collections and Archives
•Curatorial methods