Services
Dr Clarke’s clients include Aboriginal communities and land councils, state and federal government organisations, UNESCO, commercial corporations and legal firms. His consultancy work is primarily:
- Anthropological, historical and environmental sciences research.
- Native title.
- Provision of advice on cultural heritage management in relation to heritage legislation and repatriation programs.
- Ethnographic heritage surveys and management plans for areas planned for development.
- Native title research and provision of expert witness court reports.
- Providing advice and support for Aboriginal community development.
Dr Clarke has worked extensively throughout Australia, but more recently in the Goldfields of Western Australia, Western Desert, Central Australia, Top End and southeastern Australia. He carries $2 million professional indemnity and $10 million public liability insurance.
Expertise
Dr Philip A. Clarke provides high-quality professional advice with the following expertise:
- Aboriginal heritage advice, specialising in ethnographic and historical research required under state and federal Aboriginal heritage legislation.
- Native title, including fieldwork, community consultations and desktop research.
- Genealogical and community history research.
- Aboriginal site recording, including mythological, historical, environmental and rock art sites.
- Identification, curation and exhibition of Aboriginal ethnographic artefacts in state museums and Indigenous-run keeping places.
- Facilitating the repatriation of Secret Sacred Men’s Objects to Senior Custodians in Aboriginal communities.
- Recording of traditional ecological knowledge.
- Provision of advice on the capacity of Indigenous communities to adapt to climate change.
- Protection and maintenance of threatened Indigenous languages, including the study of Aboriginal English and creoles.
- Training cultural tourism providers, in relation to cultural values within the Aboriginal landscape.
- Management of complex projects, involving liaising between government agencies, corporations and Indigenous communities on the results of cultural and environmental surveys and research programs.
These areas of expertise are reflected in Dr Clarke’s research profile and his extensive publication record (refer to his full CV).
Consultancy Experience
Commencing his consultant career while still based in the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, Dr Clarke has worked for a wide range of clients who are spread across government agencies, corporations and Indigenous organisations.
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Examples include:
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Brief CV
Dr Philip Clarke has an academic background in biology, geography and anthropology. After studying biology at the University of Adelaide, he started work in the Aboriginal ethnographical collections at the South Australian Museum in 1982. While Dr Clarke’s initial research interest was chiefly in recording Aboriginal use of plants as foods, medicines and materials for making artefacts, this eventually broadened out to the anthropological investigation of indigenous perception and use of the land. This research produced a number of publications on Aboriginal mythology, ethnobotany and contact history.
During 1998–2000 Dr Clarke’s major job was as curator of the Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery Project at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide. He left the Museum permanently in Oct 2011 and took up a senior research fellowship for one year at Griffith University in Queensland to study Indigenous climate change capacity in southeastern Australia. Dr Clarke presently works as an anthropological consultant.