Erich Kolig: Intro

Erich Kolig

Anthropologist and writer.

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Retired university academic. PhD Vienna (1969): read social/cultural and physical anthropology, medicine, philosophy, and psychology); Austrian and New Zealand citizen. Taught social/cultural anthropology mainly at Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand and University of Vienna.

Career: Editor of the Waikato Islamic Studies Review. Formerly, Honorary Fellow in Religion (2006-2017); senior lecturer (reader) at Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand, (1974-2006), Vienna University (as Visiting Professor) and the University of Western Australia. Visiting Fellow in several universities and government anthropologist in Western Australia (1972-73). Prior to coming to Australia short stints at the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin. Over several years he acted as Anthropological consultant in Australia in the area of Aboriginal housing, recording of sacred sites and native title issues. In this capacity he was involved, among others, in two landmark cases of Aboriginal "land rights" (Noonkanbah and Rubibi) for the West Australian Crown Solicitor's Office and the Premier's Office.

Research: Anthropological research in Australia among Aborigines (for the most part funded by the AIAS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, now AIATSIS, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies). Also field research in Afghanistan, Austria, Indonesia, New Zealand and Vanuatu. Shorter "fact-finding" visits to North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, and other countries.

Publications: In more than 100 smaller publications (book chapters and journal articles) and in several books and monographs he has published widely on Australian Aboriginal culture and society, Indigenous politics, the New Zealand explorer Andreas Reischek, New Zealand's Muslim community and multiculturalism, Indonesia's radical Islam, conservative Islam, free speech and Islam, Muslim integration, and other topics.

Museum collections: He has contributed to museum culture by assembling (with Fritz Trupp) one of the rare collections in the world of material goods of the Afghan Hindukush, documenting daily life and artisanship of the Pashai area. This collection is now housed in the Ethnology Museum of Vienna, now called Weltmuseum (see Axel Steinmann, Afghanistan: eine Ausstellung des Museums für Völkerkunde Wien. Vienna: Snoeck, 2003). With wife Nicole, a professional ceramicist) he also made a representative collection of traditional Vanuatu pottery from the village of Wusi on the island of Espiritu Santo. This collection is in the Otago Museum in Dunedin. In 1990 he was commissioned by the Ethnology Museum in Vienna to assemble a representative collection of Aboriginal Art from the Kimberleys (Western Australia).

Contact: kolig@xtra.co.nz.