Dr Maya Haviland

Maya’s current research is focused on dynamics of co-creation and cultural collaboration; dynamics of creative innovation with traditional knowledge, and cultural resurgence and resilience through collaborative arts and cultural projects.

Maya’s research career has spanned a range of topics, specialising in community-led research with Indigenous communities, participatory action research and evaluation, and practice-based social and cultural research. She is a long-term community development practitioner and facilitator, having worked as consultant in Australia, the Pacific and North America for more than 15 years prior to joining ANU. She has undertaken a range of collaborative research projects with communities in Vanuatu, Mexico, the USA and Australia – especially in the Kimberley region.

Maya leads the Scaffolding Cultural Co-Creativity project (SCCCP), an international multi-partner action research project investigating the dynamics of co-creation in diverse organisational and cultural contexts, with the aim of developing resources and curriculum to support co-creative practice and practitioners in arts, culture and education contexts.

She is Chief Investigator on the Following the Trade Routes ARC project, in partnership with the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre and the South Australian Museum. Trade Routes is a cultural governance and research project investigating the scale, complexity and significance of historic and contemporary Aboriginal cultural economies, framed under the rubric of continuing Aboriginal cultural practice and cultural governance.