Brief biographies of the Authors

Writer : -
Year : 2010


Guha Shankar is Folklife Specialist at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington DC. He holds a BA in Media Production and Political Science from the University of Carolina, Chapel Hill (1982) and a PhD from the Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin (2003). Among other duties he conducts workshops in ethnographic research methods and skills-based training in field documentation. He is also helping develop digital technological solutions to the challenge of maintaining, preserving and providing access to multi-media collections. His teaching, research projects and publications focus on cultural policy, colonial and post-colonial formations, the US Civil Rights movement, politics and performance in the Caribbean and developments in the field of ethnographic film. He has produced and edited films on material cultural traditions and community life in a variety of cultural contexts.





Anne E. Mclaren is Associate Professor of Chinese literature and culture studies at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, where she teaches in the Chinese language and studies program. She received a PhD in Chinese literature from the Australian National University, Canberra, with a focus on oral culture, popular narratives and classical novels. Anne McLaren is the author of numerous books and studies on Chinese popular fiction and traditional oral and literate culture, including Chinese Popular Culture and Ming Chantefables (Brill 1998). Her most recent book is Performing Grief:Bridal Laments in Rural China (University of Hawaii Press, 2008). She has been working on the folk performance culture of the lower Yangzi delta, with a focus on the ritual performances of rural women, since the mid 1990s.







Catherine Grant is a PhD candidate and Senior Research Assistant at Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Griffith University (Brisbane, Australia). Her doctoral research aligns with the major 5-year project Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures: Towards an Ecology of Musical Diversity (2009- 2013), steered by Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre and funded by the Australian Research Council. She received a BA in Philosophy from the University of Queensland and B.Music (Hons) from Queensland Conservatorium, where she now also lectures in Classical Studies. Catherine has served on the national executive of the Musicological Society of Australia and is on the executive committee of the Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare, and has published and presented her research internationally.







Daan Hoekstra is a visual artist with a background in fresco painting, an independent researcher supported by the Fondo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes de Sonora and the coordinator of the project Muralismo al Fresco. A longtime restorer of murals and easel paintings, he worked with Straulino Restoration in Alamos, Sonora, Mexico on the conservation of his local church in 2009. Daan’s particular research interests include defining a unified approach to tangible, intangible and natural heritage; art as research; and demonstrating the contributions that specialised knowledge in the creation of art can make in other fields. Daan recently published a scholarly paper about art and science in Janus Head Journal, and the most recent two issues of the journal feature his artwork.







Thalia Kennedy is currently Director of Education for Turquoise Mountain, a non-governmental organisation based in Kabul, Afghanistan. Its mission is to support the revival of cultural heritage in the region through education, urban regeneration and business development. Dr Kennedy received her PhD from the School of Oriental & African Studies (London) in art and architectural history, with a focus on the Middle Eastern and South Asian spheres. She has taught to post-graduate level, has published her research internationally, and been visiting lecturer at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Her management experience includes three years with Deloitte MCS Limited in London. Dr Kennedy currently oversees and manages Turquoise Mountain’s Institute for Afghan Arts & Architecture in Kabul.







Deborah Tranter is the Director of the Cobb+Co Museum in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia which is currently developing the National Carriage Factory to provide a training facility for the safeguarding of heritage trades. She also holds the position of Director Queensland Museum Regional Services which is responsible for the delivery of museum services across Queensland. She is the author of Cobb & Co. Coaching in Queensland and Cobb & Co. in Japan. As part of her PhD thesis she completed a major study to ascertain the public value of the Queensland Museum. Her report, Valuing the Queensland Museum: A Contingent Valuation Study was published in 2009. She was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in 2000 for her contribution to cultural heritage and cultural tourism in regional Queensland.







Park Song-Yong is Professor in the Department of Anthropology of Yeungnam University(sypark@ynu. ac.kr). He was educated at the University of Aix-Marseille 1, Aix-en-Provence(DE.A. 1987, Ph.D., 1990). His research interests include social anthropology, folklore, and community studies, material culture, and ethnohistorical research. Among his publications are Economic exchange and Social Relationships (Yeungnam University Press), Near and distant Kin: the Case of Jongdong Village (Korea Journal Vol. 41, UNESCO). He has been a guest lecturer at the Ecole des Hautes en Sciences Sociales(Paris), and Visiting Professor at the university of London(S.O.A.S). He has carried out fieldwork in traditional villages of Korea, and Port-la-Nouvelle in France.