Dr Chris Urwin conducts archaeological and museum-based research with Indigenous communities in Australia and the Pacific. His research focusses on Indigenous voyaging, cross-cultural encounters and exchanges, and how people build places through time. He is currently working on two major research projects:

1. Chris is working with Yanyuwa Families and the li-Anthawirriyarra Sea Ranger Unit to understand the history of Makassan (Indonesian) voyaging to Australia's Gulf of Carpentaria, funded by an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award (2025-2027).
2. He is working with the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation and Museums Victoria to investigate poorly understood Aboriginal artefact collections from southeast Australia using archaeological techniques, ethnohistory and traditional cultural knowledge. In 2026-2030 he will lead this project with ARC Linkage funding "Uncovering Aboriginal culture and histories through artefact collections" (LP240200657).

In 2021-2022 he was Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and in 2019 was Senior Curator for First Peoples archaeology at Museums Victoria (Melbourne Museum). Chris was awarded his PhD in 2019, for which he conducted collaborative ethnoarchaeological research with the people of Orokolo Bay (Papua New Guinea) to understand their ancestral sites. By combining oral traditional and archaeological evidence (e.g., precise radiocarbon chronologies), his research showed how the Papuan Gulf's vast coastal villages were constructed in the past 700 years and how they are remembered today.   

His 2022 book Building and Remembering: An Archaeology of Place-Making on Papua New Guinea's South Coast was published by the University of Hawaiʻi Press with Australian Academy of the Humanities funding. It was awarded the 2023 John Mulvaney Book Award by the Australian Archaeological Association. 

His research has been funded by the Australian Research Council, Smithsonian Institution, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE). Chris serves his discipline as Book Reviews Editor for Australian Archaeology (2024-) and Webmaster for the Australian Archaeological Association (2023-). He was the AAA Social Media Officer in 2018-2019.

He enjoys communicating archaeology and anthropology for a broad audience. A selection of his magazine articles and media interviews can be found here: 

• Men traded wares – but women traded knowledge: what a new archaeological study tells us about PNG sea trade (The Conversation AU)
• Archaeology is Unravelling New Stories about Indigenous Seagoing Trade on Australia’s Doorstep (The Conversation AU)
• Archaeology: Western Science or Global Practice? (Current World Archaeology)
• Culture and Country (What Happens Next? podcast with Dr Susan Carland)
• Cultural heritage key to regional development in PNG and Australia (The Interpreter, Lowy Institute) 
• Indigenous Cultures have Archaeology too (Sapiens.org, Wenner Gren Foundation)
• Indigenous Seagoing Trade (ABC Radio National, Counterpoint)
• Magic, Culture and Stalactites: How Aboriginal Perspectives are Transforming Archaeological Histories (The Conversation AU)

Chris' research interests include:

• Place-making and social memory: How Indigenous communities build and remember ancestral places through time 
• Indigenous voyaging & exchange in Australia's tropical north and New Guinea
• Museum collections of Pacific canoes & navigation technology 
• the application of Bayesian chronological models in archaeology