Professor Alistair Paterson is Chair of Archaeology at the University of Western Australia, on the Oceans Institute Executive Research Team and a Research Associate, WA Museum.

His research examines the historical archaeology of colonial coastal contact and settlement in Australia’s Northwest and the Indian Ocean. His key interests are Western Australia and Indian Ocean history, Aboriginal Australia, Dutch East India Company, colonialism and exploration, rock art, and the history of collecting in Western Australia in collaboration with the Western Australian Museum, State Library, Art Gallery, and the British Museum.

He is CI on several ongoing ARC projects: (1) Collecting at the Crossroads: Anthropology, Art & Cultural Change (1939-85), (2) Entangled Knowledges in the Robert Neill Collection, and (3) Mobilising Dutch East India Company Collections for new Global Stories (MOBVOC Project).

He is the author of A Millennium of Cultural Contact (Left Coast, 2011), The Lost Legions: Culture Contact in Colonial Australia (Alta Mira, 2008) and editor with Jane Balme of Archaeology in Practice: A Student Guide to Archaeological Analyses (2nd edition, Blackwell Publishing, 2013).

In 2015-2016 was a visiting researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford. In 2009 he was a visiting researcher ay the University of Copenhagen and at the National Museum of Denmark. He is past President of the Australian Archaeological Association (2005-2007), past Head of the School of Social Sciences (2013-15), and past Archaeology Discipline Chair (2010-2012). He was an ARC Future Fellow (2016-2023). He has been involved with editing for, and publishing in, key archaeology journals including Antiquity, World Archaeology, Historical Archaeology, Archaeology in Oceania, Australasian Historical Archaeology, Internet Archaeology, and Australian Archaeology.

* ARC Future Fellow (2017-2023)
* Oceans Institute Executive Research Team
* Research Associate, WA Museum
* Member: Center for Rock Art Research and Management (UWA)
* Chair of Maritime Archaeology Advisory Committee, WA Museum
* Affiliate member: Australian Association for Consulting Archaeologists Inc

Current only:
Collecting at the Crossroads: Anthropology, Art & Cultural Change (1939-85). ARC Linkage Project LP200100045.     Administering Organisation: Deakin University. Project leader: Dr Jason Gibson. Investigators: Prof Alistair Paterson, Prof John Carty, Ms Carly Lane. ($487,222)

Entangled Knowledges in the Robert Neill Collection. ARC Linkage Project: LP200200239. Administering Organisation: Deakin University. Project leader: Dr Tiffany Shellam. Investigators: Prof Alistair Paterson, Dr Shino Konishi, Miss Shona Coyne, Dr Glenn Moore, Dr Alison Clark, Dr Ian Coates, Dr Ross Chadwick, Dr Andrew Kitchener. 

I am currently on a research intensive fellowship, and as such am not teaching.Typically I teach:
* First year archaeology
* Archaeology field methods and laboratory methods
* Historical archaeology
* Maritime archaeology
* Industrial archaeology

I supervise PhD and MA candidates, as well as honours students. I have several projects suitable for postgraduate research and am happy to discuss them with interested researchers.