Dr Douglas Lewis
BA (Rice) AM (Brown, PhD (ANU)
T: 03 8344 9211
Dr Lewis is a specialist in the ethnology of Austronesian societies and cultures and has carried out fieldwork in Indonesia and Malaysia. His main ethnographic research has been on the peoples of the district of Sikka on the island of Flores in eastern Indonesia, where he has worked since 1977. His principal interests are in comparative social organisation, myth, ritual, native texts and human evolution.
Douglas has published a monograph on the social and ceremonial order of the people of Tana ‘Ai on Flores and regularly contributes papers on myth, ritual, and language to monographs and anthropological journals. He was co-producer (with Timothy Asch and Patsy Asch) of A Celebration of Origins, a film about the rituals of Flores which was awarded Le Grand Prix of the Treizime Bilan du Film Ethnographique, Musee de l’Homme, Paris in 1994, and the Award of Excellence by the Society for Visual Anthropology and the American Anthropological Association in 1993.
Douglas is currently conducting research on texts written by Sikkanese authors about the Fajadom of Sikka and has recently completed an edition of essays on the films and anthropology of ethnographic film-maker Timothy Asch.
Teaching
- 121-056 The Human Cosmos;
- 121-069 Evolution of Consciousness
Publications
ED Lewis (2004) Timothy Asch and ethnographic film Routledge: London.
ED Lewis (2003) 'Ritual, metaphor, and the problem of direct exchange in a Tana Wai Brama child transfer' in P Nas, G Persoon and R Jaffe (eds) Framing Indonesian realities: essays in symbolic anthropology in honour of Reimar Schefold KITLV Press: Leiden.