Dr Hannah Bulloch, Our people, Social Anthropology, University of Otago, New Zealand

Contact

Room 5C24
Tel +64 3 479 8995
Email hannah.bulloch@otago.ac.nz

Research interests

Discourses and practices of international and community development, particularly in relation to ‘bottom-up’ approaches, identity formation, and local aspirations.
Family livelihood strategies, including migration, remittances and gender roles.
Relationality and individualism, domestic moral economy, and personhood over the life course.
‘Vernacular’ religion, including animism, Christianity and religious syncretism.
Narrative nonfiction and ethnographic writing.
The Philippines, Aboriginal Australia, New Zealand.

Courses

Background

Hannah has a background in social anthropology, development studies and narrative nonfiction writing. She has extensive experience in qualitative (particularly ethnographic) research and writing.

Her doctoral and post-doctoral work focused on local notions of development in the Philippines. Outputs from this included In Pursuit of Progress: Narratives of Development on a Philippine Island, published in 2017 by University of Hawaii Press. This book explores how meta-narratives of development have shaped identities and life trajectories on the Philippine island of Siquijor.

Hannah has also published on wellbeing, livelihoods, migration, foetal personhood, religion, postcolonial identity, Indigenous freshwater rights and bilateral poverty policy. Now, among other projects, she is in the latter stages of writing a book about an extraordinary journey her family undertook in 1963, from Singapore to Scotland overland.

In 2013, Hannah received an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. As part of this major grant, she held a three-year fellowship at the Australian National University’s School of Archaeology and Anthropology, where she researched the pressures facing Filipino women as they strive to improve their lives and help their families ‘get ahead’ in an age of mobility and rapid economic transformation.

She has also been a Research Fellow at the ANU’s National Centre for Indigenous Studies, where she investigated community-based approaches to Australian Aboriginal healthcare, and a research assistant at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. She has worked at the Institute of Development Studies (Sussex, UK) on health and governance projects. Finally, for over two years at the Royal Society Te Apārangi, Hannah coordinated the social sciences and humanities research funding areas of the Marsden Fund.

Hannah holds a PhD in social anthropology from the Australian National University, awarded the 2010 Australian Anthropological Society Best Thesis Prize, an MA in Creative Writing (Nonfiction) from Victoria University’s acclaimed International Institute of Modern Letters, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Development Studies from Massey University. She has been a visiting researcher at Ateneo de Manila University, the University of Hawai‘I, and the International Institute of Asian Studies in the Netherlands. She has held office as a Director of the Australian Anthropological Society.

Current projects

Overland to the Island

This sole-authored narrative non-fiction book is a revisionist history of the MacLeod family’s 1963 pilgrimage from Dunedin to Scotland, largely overland. Drawing on interviews, diaries, photos, newspaper articles and more, Hannah is critically probing themes of New Zealand-Scottish diasporic identity and post-war gendered agency.

Discourses of Development and Intergenerational Aspirations in Asia

Drawing together papers from ethnographers working across Asia, this special issue of a journal asks how imaginaries of ‘development’ shape and reflect familial aspirations and intergenerational expectations.

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Publications

Bulloch, H. C. M. (2021). Intergenerational aspirations across the life course in Asia [Introduction]. Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 22(5), 363-379. doi: 10.1080/14442213.2021.1974079

Bulloch, H. C. M. (2021). Personifying progress: Negotiating autonomy, obligation and intergenerational aspirations in the Philippines. Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 22(5), 414-433. doi: 10.1080/14442213.2021.1967437

Bulloch, H., & Fogarty, W. (2020). Alterity and the asymmetric gaze: Aboriginal constructions of self and other in Northwest Arnhem Land. Anthropological Forum, 30(4), 398-418. doi: 10.1080/00664677.2020.1850422

Bulloch, H., Fogarty, W., & Bellchambers, K. (2019). Aboriginal health and wellbeing services: Putting community-driven, strengths-based approaches into practice. Melbourne, Australia: The Lowitja Institute. 69p. Retrieved from www.lowitja.org.au

Bulloch, H. C. M. (2017). In pursuit of progress: Narratives of development on a Philippine Island. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 238p.

Bulloch, H. C. M. (2021). Intergenerational aspirations across the life course in Asia [Introduction]. Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 22(5), 363-379. doi: 10.1080/14442213.2021.1974079

Journal - Research Other

Journal - Research Article

Working Paper; Discussion Paper; Technical Report

Bulloch, H. C. M. (2017). In pursuit of progress: Narratives of development on a Philippine Island. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 238p.

Authored Book - Research

Bulloch, H. C. M. (2017). Ambivalent moralities of cooperation and corruption: Local explanations for (under)development on a Philippine island. Australian Journal of Anthropology, 28(1), 56-71. doi: 10.1111/taja.12173

Journal - Research Article

Bulloch, H. C. M. (2016). Fetal personhood in the Christian Philippines: The view from a Visayan island. Philippine Studies: Historical & Ethnographic Viewpoints, 64(2), 195-222. doi: 10.1353/phs.2016.0026

Journal - Research Article

Fogarty, W., Bulloch, H., McDonnell, S., & Davis, M. (2018). Deficit discourse and indigenous health: How narrative framings of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are reproduced in policy. Melbourne & Canberra, Australia: Lowitja Institute & National Centre of Indigenous Studies. 36p. Retrieved from www.lowitja.org.au

Working Paper; Discussion Paper; Technical Report

Bulloch, H. & Fogarty, B. (2018, November). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health: Watching our words. InSight+. Retrieved from https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2018/46/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-health-watching-our-words/

Other Research Output

Bulloch, H. C. M., & Fogarty, W. (2016). Freeing the ‘aboriginal individual’: Deconstructing ‘development as freedom’ in remote indigenous Australia. Social Analysis, 60(3), 76-94. doi: 10.3167/sa.2016.600305

Journal - Research Article

Bulloch, H. (2014). Contending developments: Local notions of development on Siquijor Island, Philippines. Journal of International Development, 26(2), 177-186. doi: 10.1002/jid.1818

Journal - Research Article

Bulloch, H. C. M. (2013). Concerning constructions of self and other: Auto-racism and imagining Amerika in the Christian Philippines. Anthropological Forum, 23(3), 221-241. doi: 10.1080/00664677.2013.804400

Journal - Research Article

Jordan, K., Bulloch, H., & Buchanan, G. (2010). Statistical equality and cultural difference in Indigenous wellbeing frameworks: A new expression of an enduring debate. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 45(3), 333-362. doi: 10.1002/j.1839-4655.2010.tb00183.x

Journal - Research Article

Jordan, K., & Bulloch, H. (2010). Indigenous affairs in the Australian Journal of Social Issues: Past, present and future. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 45(3), 297-306. doi: 10.1002/j.1839-4655.2010.tb00181.x

Journal - Research Article

Bulloch, H., & Fabinyi, M. (2009). Transnational relationships, transforming selves: Filipinas seeking husbands abroad. Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 10(2), 129-142. doi: 10.1080/14442210902856857

Journal - Research Article

Storey, D., Bulloch, H., & Overton, J. (2005). The poverty consensus: Some limitations of the ‘popular agenda’. Progress in Development Studies, 5(1), 30-44. doi: 10.1191/1464993405ps099oa

Journal - Research Article

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