The Making of Aboriginal heritage: Leonhard Adam and Anthropology at the University of Melbourne

Berlin born lawyer and ethnologist Leonhard Adam (1891-1960) fled the Nazis, and sought refuge in England in 1939 where he taught briefly at the University of London. In May 1940, as an ‘enemy alien’, he was dispatched to Australia on the Dunera, and was placed in the internment camp at Tatura in Victoria. Released in 1942, he worked at Melbourne University as lecturer and curator, and built up an ethnographic collection which became known as the Leonhard Adam Ethnological Collection, now held by the Ian Potter Museum of Art. Adam remained at Melbourne University until his death. In this presentation Michael Davis draws on a close examination of the Adam Papers in the University of Melbourne Archives, to explore Adam’s ethnographic work, and his position within the prevailing anthropological establishment in Melbourne and Australia, and with his large network of correspondents. He will consider Adam’s status as a European intellectual ‘outsider’ as a possible influence on his work in Aboriginal art and anthropology.

Dr Michael Davis is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Sydney Environment Institute, at The University of Sydney. His research for this project was supported by a fellowship from the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) and the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) made possible through a grant from the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Presenter: Dr Michael Davis