معرفی
Ben Shaw is a Lecturer in the Evolution of Cultural Diversity at the Australian National University under the School of Culture, History and Language. His research focuses on the interplay between past climates, environments, and human behaviors in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly Papua New Guinea, where he has conducted extensive fieldwork for over 12 years across island, coastal, and highland regions.
Ben is a New Zealand-trained archaeologist and biological anthropologist, holding a PhD from the Australian National University (2011-2014). He has held a Postdoctoral Fellowship (2015-2016) and a DECRA Fellowship (2017-2020) at the University of New South Wales. In 2020, he was elected an International Fellow of the Explorers Club.
His research spans the full human history of the Pacific, including colonisation, Lapita cultural dispersal, and historic cultural practices. He employs multidisciplinary approaches to study cultural and technological adaptations, such as isotopic analysis of migration using dental remains, and has contributed to understanding the Holocene dispersal of people along northern New Guinea’s coast. His work in the Massim Islands has established a Late Pleistocene antiquity for human settlement, defined the arrival of Austronesian language-associated cultures, and modeled the antiquity of known cultural practices. In the Highlands, he linked sociocultural changes to agricultural developments.
Ben’s publications include 15 recent articles on topics ranging from climate-driven human adaptation to Lapita-Papuan interaction and prehistoric exchange networks. His work often integrates archaeological stratigraphy, radiocarbon dating, and isotopic analysis.
Scientific Awards:
- International Fellow of the Explorers Club (2020)
Advising & Grants: Ben has advised students including Francois-Xavier Faucounau and Annie Kwai. He is part of an international team awarded a Marsden grant (2020-2022) to investigate Holocene dispersal along New Guinea’s northern coast.
