Professor Claire Smith
Professor
College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Claire Smith's research centres on how Indigenous knowledges can transform archaeological theory, method and practice. Her work is driven by a foundational question: how can centring Indigenous worldviews generate new knowledge? Working collaboratively with Aboriginal people, and specialising in the analysis of style, her research advances conceptualisations of how knowledge is generated, validated and applied.
Claire Smith's research is grounded in long-term relationships of trust and sustained community partnerships. She has worked with Aboriginal people in the Barunga region of the Northern Territory every year since 1990, with Ngadjuri people since 1998, and with Adnyamathanha people since 2020. In partnership with the Barunga Aboriginal Knowledge Centre, her current research is developing an analytical framework for weaving Aboriginal and Western knowledges across archaeology and cultural heritage.
With Wiradjuri archaeologist Dr Kellie Pollard, Claire Smith co-leads the Australian Hub for the US National Science Foundation Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (CBIKS), connecting 57 Indigenous communities across eight international hubs in the US, Canada, Aotearoa and Australia.
Claire Smith is the twice-elected President of the World Archaeological Congress (2003–2014). She was Academic Secretary of the 10th World Archaeological Congress, held in Darwin in June 2025, which had 3,413 participants (2,294 in person and 1,119 online) and provided financial support for the in-person participation of 1050 participants from 80 countries, and for Global Regional Hubs in eight countries.
With over 250 research outputs, Claire Smith's scholarly reach spans academic, policy and public audiences. Her major works include the Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology (edited, Springer, 20 volumes, 2nd edition 2020, 6.12 million accesses) and The Oxford Handbook of Global Indigenous Archaeologies (co-edited, Oxford University Press, 2026).
Claire Smith works collaboratively to build world-class research teams with global impact. During her tenure at Flinders University archaeology has grown from 4.5 staff in 1998 to 23 in 2026 (including multi-year contracts). In 2026 archaeology was ranked 50 in the QS global rankings, the equal top ranked discipline at Flinders (with Nursing).
The scale and impact of Claire Smith's research program is reflected in cumulative competitive funding of $7.76M, including $1.67M for professional and community organisations. She is also a CI in the $5M ARC Training Centre for Archaeology in the Resources Sector and the USD$30M CBIKS. Her research has been adopted in government policy in Australia, the US, Indonesia and the UK, including by the World Bank and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
1996 Doctor of Philosophy. University of New England, Australia.
Thesis title: Situating Style: an ethno-archaeological study of social and material context in an Australian Aboriginal artistic system. Supervisors: Jane Balme, Betty Meehan and Mike Morwood.
1990 Bachelor of Arts, First Class Honours, University Medal, University of New England, Australia.
Thesis title: Designed Dreaming: assessing the relationship between style, social structure and environment in Aboriginal Australia. Supervisors: Jane Balme and Mike Morwood.
Australian Research Council Grants
2025–2030 $5,000,000 ARC Training Centre for Advancing Archaeology in the Resources Sector. Chief Investigator. Lead Investigator and Training Centre Director Liam Brady. Industrial Transformation Training Centres. IC250100003.
2022–2026 $1,760,680 Indigenist archaeology. Kellie Pollard, Claire Smith, Liam Brady, Nicholas Bullot, Craig Taylor. IN220100079.
2022–2024 $910,000 Warratyi. Cultural innovation in the Indigenous settlement of Australia. Mike Smith, Claire Smith, Chris Wilson, Mike Morley. DP220101522.
2020–2022 $277,000 'Slow' digitisation, community heritage and Martindale Hall. Jane Haggis, Tully Barnett, Heather Burke, Penelope Edmunds, Claire Smith, Margaret Allen, Ania Kotarba. SR200200900.
2019–2021 $478,500 Ochre archaeomicrobiology. Rachel Popelka-Filcoff, Claire Lenehan, Claire Smith, Amy Roberts, Robert Edwards, Shanan Tobe. DP190102219.
2010–2012 $158,000 Archaeology in the longrass: Aboriginal fringe camps. Kellie Pollard, Claire Smith, Heather Burke. DI100100297.
2010–2012 $80,007 Archaeology in the longrass: Understanding contact. Claire Smith, Heather Burke. LP100100876.
2004–2007 $319,000 Shared and separate histories. Claire Smith, Jane Balme, Heather Burke. DP0453101.
2004–2007 $88,108 Mining and transformation in Jawoyn country. Jane Balme, Claire Smith, Heather Burke. LP0455636.
2004 $30,000 Indigenous collections and knowledge archives research network (led by Howard Morphy). SR0354824.
1999–2002 $103,218 Archaeology of multiculturalism in colonial Australia. Claire Smith. C59942105.
1994–1997 $150,000 An ethnoarchaeological study of Indigenous body art. Claire Smith. ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Other major grants
2023— CI and Co-Lead, Australian Hub, US National Science Foundation Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (CBIKS). USD$30M.
Claire Smith's responsibilities at Flinders University encompass research, teaching, postgraduate supervision and public outreach. She has produced over 250 research outputs, including 9 books, 6 edited volumes, 39 refereed journal articles, 64 book chapters, 15 policy submissions, 39 public-facing articles and two documentaries, one aired on SBS. She is committed to making her research relevant and accessible to general audiences and has written 17 public-facing articles in The Conversation (321,000+ reads, with her most read article having 91,000+ reads), and 22 opinion articles in media outlets that include The Guardian, The Australian, Melbourne Age, SMH, Canberra Times, Crikey and Koori Mail.
Central to Claire Smith's teaching of undergraduate students and her supervision of postgraduate researchers is a commitment to ensuring students are well positioned for employment after graduation. She works actively to support Indigenous researchers into sustainable careers. She has supervised 47 postgraduate and Honours completions, 37 as principal supervisor. She has mentored over 20 Indigenous researchers and was the principal supervisor for the first two Aboriginal people to be awarded a PhD in archaeology.
Since 1998 Claire Smith has coordinated an annual community archaeology field school at Barunga, Northern Territory, now delivered in partnership with the Barunga Aboriginal Knowledge Centre, providing students with direct experience of ethical, community-led research practice on Country.
Membership of Expert Committees
2026— Senior Council representative for Southeastern Asia and the Pacific, World Archaeological Congress.
2024— Steering Group, Society for Teaching and Learning Archaeology and Heritage.
2023— Excellence in Public Education Awards Committee, Society for American Archaeology.
2021–2023 Task Force on Revisions of the Principles of Archaeological Ethics, Society for American Archaeology.
2019 Working Group, Constitution Revision, Society for East Asian Archaeology.
2019–2022 Fulbright SA Selection Committee, Australian-American Fulbright Commission.
2018–2019 Dental Health Service Expert Advisory Committee, Royal Flying Doctor Service.
2015–2018 Science and Research Committee, South Australian Museum.
2009–2011 Humanities and Creative Arts Panel, College of Experts, Australian Research Council.
2009–2010 Reference Group, Australian World Heritage Committee.
2010 World Commission of Anthropologies, American Anthropological Association.
2003–2009 Public Education Committee, Society for American Archaeology.
2007 Humanities Assessment Panel, Research Quality Framework, Australian Research Council.
Claire Smith is a nationally awarded teacher whose approach to teaching archaeology is built on three principles: delight, instruct and challenge. Co-recipient, with Professor Heather Burke, of the Carrick Award for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (team teaching category), she believes imagination is the greatest incentive to independent learning and that the classroom is most productive when working as a team. She regularly publishes and presents on teaching practice at national and international conferences.
Claire Smith enjoys teaching and wants her students to enjoy learning. The fun she encourages shares the responsibility for learning and helps create a dynamic, inspirational and collaborative teaching and learning environment. Assessment tasks are creative. In A History of Archaeological Thought, students design trading cards of real archaeologists (dead or alive) whose theoretical paradigms they have researched in depth. In Discovering Archaeology, The Skin Game, co-taught with Aboriginal teachers, reveals the complexity of Aboriginal kinship systems by assigning each student to a kinship category, instantly creating classificatory relationships across the class. By working through who they can marry, who they must avoid and how they should behave towards their classificatory mothers, fathers and siblings, students briefly immerse themselves in the elegance and sophistication of an orally transmitted knowledge system — and confront the inadequacy of colonial representations of it.
A body of co-developed resources has shaped archaeological education in Australia and internationally. The Archaeologist's Field Handbook, coauthored with Heather Burke and Mick Morrison and first published in 2004, has trained generations of Australian archaeologists. This book's impact was broadened internationally by Spanish and US editions, co-authored by Ines Domingo Sanz and Larry Zimmerman. Archaeology to Delight and Instruct (with Heather Burke) grew directly from classroom practice and directly inspired Karina Croucher and Hannah Cobb's Archaeology to Transform and Disrupt.
Community Archaeology Field School
Claire Smith's community archaeology field school at Barunga, Northern Territory has run annually since 1998. Placing the classroom on Aboriginal lands embeds ethical, community-led practice into the student experience. A distinctive feature is one-on-one teaching by Elders, activating their knowledge and authority on Country in ways not replicable in a university classroom. For many students it is a transformative experience, reshaping how they understand archaeology and themselves.
Barunga community, Northern Territory
Teaching Awards
2006 Carrick National Award for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Team Category (with H. Burke).
2004 Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching, Flinders University, Team Category (with H. Burke).
Leadership of Professional Organisations 2022—2025 Academic Secretary, 10th World Archaeological Congress, Darwin, Australia; 2003—2014 President, World Archaeological Congress. Two five-year terms. 2012—2013 International Academic Secretary, 7th World Archaeological Congress, Dead Sea, Jordan; 2004—2008 Chair, South Australian Chapter, Fulbright Association, Australia; 2000—2003 Deputy Academic Secretary, 5th World Archaeological Congress, 2003, Washington, DC.
Conference Organisation June 2025 10th World Archaeological Congress (WAC-10), Darwin, Australia; Sept 2022 Unsettling Archaeology Symposium, Indian Institute of Technology, Ghandinagar, India; 2021 Cultural Heritage as a Driver for Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals’ symposium; 2019 Using social media to understand emergent extremist behaviours’ symposium, Adelaide, Australia; 2013 7th World Archaeological Congress (WAC-7), Dead Sea, Jordan; 2009 Digital Heritage’ symposium, Adelaide, Australia; 2003 Fifth World Archaeological Congress (WAC-5), Washington, DC.
Editorial Boards Antiquity, Durham University, UK; Lahore Museum Bulletin, Lahore, Pakistan; Mimbar, Universitas Islam Negeri, Jakarta, Indonesia; Heritage, MDPI, Switzerland; Pyrenae, University of Barcelona, Spain; Scientific Committee, Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica, University of Iași, Romania; Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage, Maney Pubs, UK.; Internet Archaeology, York University, UK; Rock Art Research, Australian Rock Art Research Association, Australia.
Professional Memberships Australian Academy of Humanities; Australian Archaeological Association; Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies; Society for American Archaeology; World Archaeological Congress.
Keynote, Dinner and Named Addresses 47 in Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Puerto Rico, UK, USA.
Academic Reviewing
Journals Nature, Scientific Reports-Nature, Antiquity, American Antiquity, Journal of Social Archaeology, Current Anthropology, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Internet Archaeology, Ethnohistory, Arts, Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage, Rock Art Research, Religions, Heritage, Archaeologies, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Water; Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, African Education Research Journal, Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, Lahore Museum Bulletin, Social Sciences, Australian Archaeology, Archaeology in Oceania, Curator: The Museum Journal, Business & Society, Indonesian Journal of Interdisciplinary Islamic Studies, Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Journal of Coastal and Island Archaeology.
Books Australia: Allen and Unwin; Royal Society of Victoria; Aboriginal History; Historical Records of Australian Science, Aboriginal Studies Press. North America: Springer; Palgrave McMillan; Berghahn Books; Left Coast Press; Alta Mira Press; University of Florida Press; University of Toronto Press. Britain & Europe: Wiley-Blackwell; Bloomsbury; Routledge; Oxford University Press; Cambridge University Press.
Funding Australian Research Council; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada; Wenner-Gren Foundation, USA; McArthur Foundation, USA (twice for the Genius program); Marsden Fund, N.Z.; John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, USA.
- Aboriginal issues
- Archaeology
- Gender studies
- Globalisation
- Indigenous Australia
- Internet
- Museums
- Race relations
- Terrorism
- Visual arts
- Aboriginal Studies
- Gender Issues
- Globalisation and Indigenous Peoples
- Indigenous Australian Archaeology
- Internet
- Rock art, especially in Australia and in terms of women's roles
- Socially mediated terrorism
Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=1-CoRvYAAAAJ&hl=en
Academia https://flinders.academia.edu/ClaireSmith
Research Gate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Claire_Smith35
Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology http://www.bookmetrix.com/detail/book/000ec975-9c4b-4597-8f54-c7a09d8b79b4#readers
Community Archaeology Field School: https://barungafieldschool.wordpress.com/
Sturt Rd, Bedford Park
South Australia 5042
South Australia | Northern Territory
Global | Online
Follow Flinders
