Aaron Jackson

Dr Aaron J. Jackson is a cultural anthropologist whose work lies at the intersection of care, embodiment, and cognitive disability. His research explores how practices of care give rise to modes of relationality across family life, support services, and experiences of loss. He engages in qualitative and interpretive research methods, including ethnography, in-depth interviews, life history approaches, and narrative analysis. He also works with creative nonfiction as a mode of anthropological expression, bridging empirical insight and literary form.

He joined Monash University in 2025 as a Lecturer in Anthropology. Prior to this he was a postdoctoral researcher and coordinator of the Master of Disability Practice at the Living with Disability Research Centre, La Trobe University. From 2019 to 2022, he lectured in anthropology at the University of Melbourne, where he also completed his PhD in the School of Social and Political Sciences.

Aaron’s research has been published in leading journals such as Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Anthropological Quarterly, and Ethos, contributing to debates in care theory and the anthropology of disability. His ethnographic monograph Worlds of Care (University of California Press, 2021), examines the moral and emotional lives of fathers raising children with cognitive disabilities in the United States. The book troubles dominant narratives of gender and care by exploring the relationship between masculinity and embodied caregiving, and foregrounds the moral re-orientations and intimacies that emerge in the face of disruption. It was published as part of the press’s renowned California Series in Public Anthropology.

He has recently contributed to longitudinal research on service quality in Disability Support Accomodation, with a focus on the perspectives of both people with intellectual disability and families. From 2022 to 2024, he was also involved in the evaluation of My Rights Matter, an initiative of the NSW Council for Intellectual Disability aimed at promoting decision-making rights for people with intellectual disabilities.