Ewan is a PhD candidate and sessional academic in the Department of History and Archaeology. He is interested in Roman archaeology and history, archaeological theory, and the archaeology of communities, particularly within the Roman provinces of southeastern Europe. His current research (re)examines scholarly conceptualisations of ‘Roman military communities’, offering a more-than-human new materialist understanding of these communities as dynamic relational assemblages of humans, objects, signs, landscapes, and more. He applies this ‘assemblage thinking’ framework, adapted from the writings of thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Manuel DeLanda, Ian Buchanan, Oliver Harris, and Rachel Crellin, to Roman military communities in the province of Dalmatia. Central to his research is addressing the tension between ‘affect’ and ‘agency’ in new materialist archaeology (a tension often observed by its critics).

Ewan is also interested in critical studies of the ancient world (broadly defined). This includes de/postcolonial (re)examinations, social histories, and reception studies, amongst other themes. Tenets of digital and open archaeology and epigraphy underpin Ewan’s practice and have led to him exploring the possible applications of open access approaches to database design, management, and sharing. He endeavours to contribute towards the development of efficient, theoretically informed, and culturally sensitive open practices within humanities research. He is able to engage with some of these goals in his role as digital research assistant on the MANTO project, where he has been developing and deploying a database infrastructure for artefacts.

Ewan is an also practicing field archaeologist with experience on commercial and academic projects in Australia and Croatia. As centre assistant and web developer at the Centre for Applied History and the Australia and Aotearoa NZ Public History Network, Ewan has also developed an interest in the public consumption and creation of history.

Ewan has worked as a sessional academic on several units in the Department of History and Archaeology, designing and delivering tutorial content, contributing to assessment design, and grading assessments for:

• AHIS1210: Studying the Past from the Bronze Age to Byzantium
• AHIS1300: Digging up the Past: An Introduction to Archaeology
• AHIS1301: World Archaeology
• AHIS2225: Rome and the Caesars
• AHIS2302: Archaeology and Society: Archaeological Evidence
• AHIS3005: Cultural Heritage and Public History
• FOAR7004: Arts Internship for Researchers

Ewan has also convened a unit on Archaeological theory:

• AHIS7001: Material Worlds

As convenor, Ewan strove to illuminate the dynamic and valuable nature of theory in archaeolgy, encouraging Master's students to openly yet critically embrace and apply theory in their own research.