Repatriation and Restituion of colonial collections

Eighteenth and Nineteenth century Colonial thought in Asia and Australasia

Racial thought

History of Anthropology

History of Anzac Day

War and memory 

Dr Gareth Knapman is a Research Fellow on the ARC Discovery Project 'Profit and Loss, The commercial trade in Indigenous human remains' at the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University. Dr Knapman previously worked as a curator and repatriation officer at Museum Victoria’s Indigenous Cultures Department. He has written extensively on museum collections and collecting, and has made significant contributions to Australian history. He is a leading authority on nineteenth-century British colonialism in Southeast Asia. His book, Race and British Colonialism in Southeast Asia (2017), creates a new understanding of colonial Southeast Asia. He was a research officer on the Return, Reconcile, Renew (2013–2016) and Restoring Dignity (2018–2020) projects, both funded by the Australian Research Council 

Knapman is currently writing a book on Sovereignty and Indigenous Property in the British colonial world. He is working towards developing a narrative of settlement uniting British India with settlements in Southeast Asia and Australia. In this research, he contends that modern ideas of sovereignty developed through colonial interactions with the ambiguities between private property and sovereignty. In addition to his work on Southeast Asia, Dr Knapman has also made significant contributions to Australian Aboriginal history. 

DP200101814 Profit and Loss: ‘They made money out of our Old People’

The intersections between sovereignty and private property in British colonial thought in the Indian Ocean world