History of Comparative human anatomy and biological anthropology

Museums and Indigenous cultures, c. 1780 - 1970

Colonial Collecting of Human Bodily Remains

 Provenance Research and the Repatriation of the Indigenous dead 

eResearch in history and Heritage Studies

Paul Turnbull was Australia’s first professor of e-history (University of Queensland) and is now professor emeritus of digital humanities and history at the University of Tasmania, and an honorary professor of history at the University of Queensland. He is internationally known for his pioneering work in digitally based history and heritage research and the communication of its outcomes.  He has held distinguished visiting professorships in North American and European universities. Since 2014, Paul has been primarily involved in the creation of digital resources to assist the repatriation of the bodily remains of Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples from Western scientific collections to their descendants. 

Paul is also internationally known for his research and writings over the past thirty years on colonial era theft and medico-scientific uses of the Ancestral Remains of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.  For thirty years, he has assisted Indigenous representative organizations, museums, and the Australian government in their repatriation efforts.  

Paul's publications include (co-edited with Cressida Fforde and Jane Hubert) The Dead and their Possessions: Repatriation in Principle, Policy and Practice (Routledge 2002), (co-edited with Michael Pickering), 'The Long Journey Home': Perspectives on the Repatriation of Indigenous Human Remains (Berghahn Books, 2010); Science, Museums and Collecting the Indigenous Dead in Colonial Australia (Palgrave Macmillan 2017). Recent writings include essays in the Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation (2020).  Paul is currently writing a social history of craniometry and essays dealing with aspects of the plunder of Indigenous cultural heritage in Queensland.