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Anna-Karina Hermkens

Anthropoligist  |  Ceramicist








Interviewer: Courtney Boag
Cinematography: Stéphanie Austruy

Photo (below): Provided by Anna-Karina Hermkens



3 October, 2024





“Much of the peacebuilding work happening around the world to address conflict often excludes women and youth from peace negotiations and a lot of emphasis is placed on male leaders. But what kind of peace can we achieve if a large part of the population is not included in the conversation?”


Anna-Karina Hermkens










Anna-Karina Hermkens is a cultural anthropologist, researcher, writer, and lecturer whose work spans the fields of cultural anthropology, art and anthropology, historical anthropology, museum studies, gender studies, and religious studies, including pilgrimage studies. Her research is distinguished by extensive fieldwork in diverse regions, including West Papua (Jayapura area), the North Moluccas (Ternate), Papua New Guinea (Port Moresby, Madang, Collingwood Bay, and Bougainville), and the Solomon Islands (Guadalcanal-Marau area).

Anna-Karina’s research employs gender as a critical analytical lens to examine complex intersections of identity and power. Her work has explored the shifting gender dynamics of barkcloth art among the Maisin people in Collingwood Bay and the interplay between religious identity, ideology, and conflict in Ternate and Papua New Guinea. More recently, her research has focused on the relationship between faith and eco-conflict, particularly the tensions surrounding logging, mining, and the effects of climate change on Indigenous art practices in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville and Collingwood Bay, Papua New Guinea.

Anna-Karina previously served as a postdoctoral research fellow in Professor Margaret Jolly’s Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship project, Engendering Persons, Transforming Things: Christianities, Commodities and Individualism in Oceania. She is currently a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University and a visiting research fellow with Professor Nicholas Thomas’s Pacific Presences Project at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK.

Her academic pursuits are complemented by her passion for establishing an 'anthropology-in-art' practice, integrating academic theory and research on gender and art with her creative work in ceramics and painting. She is the convenor of the ART-Ethnography Lab, which operates at the nexus of art and ethnography. Through her multidisciplinary work, Anna-Karina seeks to foster deeper understandings of cultural practices and their evolving dynamics in the face of global challenges.































Interested to learn more about Anna-Karina’s research? Follow her work here. 


Be sure to check out the ART-Ethnography Research Lab that Anna-Karina coordinates. 

Check out Anna-Karina’s ceramic practice at Bumblehill Atelier here.

Follow Anna-Karina on LinkedIn via @annakarinahermkens


Anthrōprospective is Australia’s first independent anthropology journal of it’s kind. Based in Naarm (Melbourne).

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we work, the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri and Bunurong people.