Marcus Baynes-Rock

Dr Marcus Baynes-Rock is a DECRA Research Fellow at Deakin University's Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation within the Faculty of Arts and Education. His work focuses on human-animal relationships, cultural ecology, and environmental studies. Key research areas include indigenous land management practices (e.g., cultural burning), interspecies coexistence, and the social roles of animals in cross-cultural contexts. He has conducted fieldwork in Ethiopia and Australia, exploring topics like hyena-human interactions and the socio-cultural perception of reptiles and insects.

Grant-funded projects include the ARC DECRA fellowship examining animals' roles in cultural burning as resistance to colonization. His publications span anthropology, ecology, and philosophy, with notable works on Ethiopian Harari hyena symbolism, Australian crocodile conservation, and multispecies ethics.

Research outputs include books like Among the Bone Eaters and Crocodile Undone, alongside peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Human Ecology and Africa. His work bridges ethnography, environmental science, and posthumanist theory to analyze non-human agency in socio-ecological systems.