Biography
Paul Turnbull is one of Australia’s leading researcher in the field of creating, preserving and disseminating historical research in networked digital forms. Among the most significant outcomes of his research has been South Seas, a rich and innovative online resource, created in collaboration with the National Library of Australia, exploring the history of cross-cultural encounters during James Cook’s first Pacific Voyage (1768-1771): http://southseas.nla.gov.au
Paul is chair of the one of the School of Arts, Media and Culture – one of the largest university schools in the humanities and creative arts in Australia, in which there is a growing e-research agenda, in association with the School’s research Centre for Public Culture and Ideas. http://www.griffith.edu.au/centre/cpci He has a special brief within the Centre to develop a number of major digital research projects, including an online cultural atlas of indigenous Queensland cultural heritage, the Brisbane Memory Project and Qpasifika, a project exploring indigenous performance traditions through digital media. These research ventures are being undertaken with personnel of the Queensland Museum, the Queensland State Library, the State Archives and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and involve development of new techniques (including the employment of grid computing technologies) for facilitating the interpretation and annotation of digital surrogates of text, artifacts and artworks held by these institutions in collaboration with indigenous knowledge custodians and a range of other community organizations.
Paul is also the chair of Griffith University’s e-learning strategic committee, and responsible for the development of cyber-infrastructure for teaching and learning.
