Current Projects

This is a summary of the projects I am working on currently. If only there was more time – I am finding them all so interesting!

These projects all overlap because memory systems are the same for all of us who have a human brain. We are, and have always been, far more alike than we are different. That idea is key to all my work. Individual differences matter hugely, but our similarities are the foundation on which we can build using our differences.

I am always working on my memory experiments, but the dominant current projects are:

1. The knowledge gene, NF1 and indigenous knowledge systems
2. Indigenous knowledge systems, memory and the implications for education
3. Using indigenous memory systems to learn Chinese (and French)
4. Art and memory systems, with a focus on narrative scrolls (and sand talk)
5. Books, there’s always books

1.The knowledge gene: NF1 and Indigenous knowledge systems

The Knowledge Gene provides robust evidence that music, art, story, connection to place and attention span are critical to making us human and are heavily influenced by the human allele of the huge gene, NF1, fixed in all modern human, Neanderthal and Denisovan populations. This works parallel to the work on FOXP2,’the language gene’. I created a skill set for Indigenous knowledge which was used to test the hypothesis that this gene had such a massive impact on learning that evolution favoured it and we all have two copies.

The research is based on a major discovery about NF1 by researchers in the US.

The knowledge gene lens added a new tool for my research exploring indigenous knowledge systems back past the Neolithic to over 70,000 years ago. I was able to trace the (comparatively recent) impact on knowledge systems as writing took hold, moving art, music and place away from the heart of learning. The strongest record for that is China – hence my learning Chinese over the last few years. It also unexpectedly threw up the critical role of neurodiversity in human evolution – and the really concrete archaeological and evolutionary evidence for that. We have a lot to learn from the past.

This research involved working with a group I call my Advisors, who include artists, musicians, neurodiverse individuals and parents of those with neurodiversities. It also includes experts on art and music education, performance for science teaching, ageing and dementia. Together, using very different mindsets, we explored the implications of the untapped potential of art, music, story and our visual spatial skills in education and throughout a long life. It is so revealing spending a great deal of time immersed with people who see the world through different cognitive lenses. Our work will continue.

The Knowledge Gene was published by Allen & Unwin in September 2024 for Australia and New Zealand. It will be published for North America on April 5, 2025 by Greystone Books.

2. Indigenous knowledge systems, memory and implications for education

I am at heart an educator. The implications for education are immense – and education goes on for as long as people keep learning, which should be for a lifetime if you value your intellectual abilities and identity.

In schools, this project involves the formal inclusion of the method of loci and – this is the exciting bit! – Songlines in the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) Study Design for Psychology from 2023. This involved acting as a consultant for the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) for the new dot point to the Study Design:

. the use of mnemonics (acronyms, acrostics and the method of loci) by written cultures to to increase the encoding, storage and retrieval of informations as compared with the use of mnemonics such as sung narrative used by oral cultures, including Aboriginal peoples’ use of songlines.

How good is that? Songlines in an official Australian curriculum – at last!

Indigenous knowledge systems are also being addressed in many other aspects of the Australian school curriculum, so I am working with educators, schools and universities.

One such project is led by the University of Melbourne – in particular through the Psychology Department and Meredith McKague. In our four-university team are representatives of First Nations groups within Melbourne University, as well as Tyson Yunkaporta at Deakin Uni and David Reser at Monash. Plus me at LaTrobe.

I am also working with the cultural astronomy students in the Physics Department through Duane Hamacher as well as The Indigenous Engineering Community of Learning and Practice in the Engineering Faculty. As my first degree was Engineering and my great love has been physics, this is really special for me.

I continue to explore the most effective memory methods for a vast array of memory experiments, including my new passions for classical music, opera and Shakespeare.

3. Using indigenous memory systems to learn Chinese (and French)

I am doing a large number of memory experiments testing out various mnemonic techniques. One is dominating this area: learning Chinese / Mandarin.

There are two main reasons I took on Chinese. Firstly, it is the only script which is spoken today where we can trace the script right back to the mnemonics even before the Neolithic. Secondly, I decided to try the hardest thing I could imagine, for someone with a naturally very poor memory but strong logic and scientific thinking, to test out the methods in as many aspects as possible. Chinese won hands down in the ‘hardest thing possible’ category.

I will be writing about this at length. I am becoming obsessed with Chinese and many aspects of the Chinese culture over the millennia, especially the way art and calligraphy have been used to share knowledge and stories.

I am also studying French to compare using the same methods with a very different language – one with which English speakers have some hooks and commonality. The implementation of the memory methods is significantly different.

4. Art for knowledge sake

There are many aspects of art which act as mnemonic cues in both oral and literate cultures, and those who are in between (the definitions are more fuzzy for me than they used to be). From the moment I first saw Chinese handscrolls at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, I fell totally in love with this art form.

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chhs/hd_chhs.htm

As a mnemonic technique, handscrolls are superb. But then I realised that we always concentrate on the material presentation of art (another fuzzy concept – is art to be defined as mark-making?). But if we consider it cognitively, then handscrolls represent a gradual revelation of the knowledge and concepts being presented for a small audience from one to a few.

And so does Aboriginal sand talk. (Thank you Tyson Yunkaporta). This also matches the birchbark scrolls of the Ojibwa (Anishinaabe) people of North America and many other forms of knowledge encoding narrative. This is a slow-release format which enables higher levels of thinking and social engagement and … I could go on and on.

Critically, in research on the prehistory of art, it is clear that ancient artists presented their knowledge in extensive mnemonic panels – one in the United States is 74 kilometres of petroglyphs!

Why isn’t this format used in education? It works a treat as a mnemonic method and to differentiate the curriculum (my old stamping ground!) for different learners. The response in teacher workshops for using this format has been wonderful.

My Art for Knowledge Sake projects have led to new classes in art, calligraphy and book binding.

5. Writing, there’s always writing

I acknowledge here my family members and close friends who are laughing at me now. I did say no more books after The Memory Code. And again after Memory Craft. (Daughter Bec even filmed me saying it, she was so convinced I was wrong.) And then, most emphatically after Songlines. I was the only person who believed me.

I was involved in writing sections for two VCE Psychology textbooks (very differently).

Songlines: the power and promise, written with First Nations co-author Margo Neale, leads the First Knowledges series for Thames & Hudson. Margo and I then collaborated again for Songlines for Younger Readers, to lead the children’s version of the First Knowledges series. It was released in October 2023. Songlines for Younger Readers has been awarded a Notable Book by the Children’s Book Council of Australia, and shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards.

The Knowledge Gene was published in September 2024 by Allen & Unwin (Aus and NZ) and will be published for North America in 2025. The Knowledge Gene has provided me with my greatest challenge to date requiring me to revisit all my previous research with a new lens.

I am now planning to update this website converting the hundreds of notes I have saved into a valuable resource on knowledge systems. And to write articles for various outlets who I have been promising words to for years. And of course, there will be the academic articles co-authored from the various research projects.
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Everyday, I walk some part of the 12 kilometres of songlines I have implemented here in Castlemaine. I start the day getting both physical and mental exercise and just being happy. I love the challenge of the unusual garden and maintaining my memory skills through Memory League.

I think I must be the luckiest person on the planet.

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