Mick Morrison

Associate Professor Morrison is an archaeologist with a career long interest in the heritage and histories of Aboriginal communities in northern Cape York Peninsula (CYP). This research investigates two key themes: (1)  occupation histories, foodways and lifeways during the Holocene, and; (2) cross-cultural entanglements, political economies and negotiation of new structures of power during the early colonial period (1865-1939). He has led dozens of collaborative and community-based research projects with Aboriginal custodians across Australia and particularly in the northern Cape York Peninsula region. He is an advocate for a community engaged approach to research; that is, research projects designed to address questions and priorities identified by community and industry partners, and to generate distinctive outputs for partners. 

Dr Morrison has worked in the Australian cultural heritage sector for several decades, providing advice, training and support to Aboriginal custodians and other stakeholders in the management of homelands and cultural heritage places and values. This includes work supporting Aboriginal land and sea management initiatives, and on telecommunications, energy, mineral exploration, mining, roads and water infrastructure projects. He has published and taught on cultural heritage and continues to do so from Anaiwan country on the northern New England Tablelands, NSW.

Dr Morrison has over a decade of experience teaching archaeology students at all levels (undergraduate to PhD), having developed and delivered units in environmental archaeology, coastal archaeology, archaeological method and theory, cultural heritage, and digital humanities. He is a co-author of the Archaeologist’s Field Handbook (Allen and Unwin, 2017), a text used in many University archaeology field methods courses internationally. 

His current role at UNE is in the digital humanities, which allows for deep engagement with cutting edge approaches to digitisation, data analysis, data curation and communication. He applies these approaches to his research, and also works to enhance the knowledge, expertise and digital literacy of students at all levels. He welcomes enquiries from potential research students interested in working with me.