Heritage specialist recognised for excellence

Michael Pearson AO training future heritage managers at the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania. Photo by Sally May.

Michael Pearson originally came to ANU as a postgraduate in Archaeology in 1974.

In fact, it was some of his postgraduate work that pushed him towards a career in preservation.

The postgraduate research included a regional survey of the Macquarie River Valley in NSW.

“You could not locate and research sites without feeling a responsibility to try to see that they were protected into the future,” says Dr Pearson.

Dr Pearson also assisted the local community at Holbrook in NSW to assess a reputed bushranger cave site.

“That involved me for the first time with the strong passion that a local community can have for its own heritage.”

Dr Pearson is now the Chair of the Institute of Professional Practice in Heritage and the Arts (IPPHA), which is hosted within the Research School of Humanities and the Arts, and was just made an Officer of the General Division of the Order of Australia.

“Receiving an Order of Australia gives me great personal satisfaction that the work done over the years is, in fact, of wider value recognised by others.

“Other heritage professionals, such as Kristal Buckley in Victoria and Howard Tanner in NSW, have also been honoured in this round of awards, and such increasing recognition of the value of the field and the efforts of its practitioners hopefully helps in raising the public profile of heritage conservation.”

The award gives Dr Pearson’s leading heritage practice broader recognition, but the quality of his work is something that those in the field already knew.

“It’s not a surprise that he’s received such an honour, he’s made such an outstanding contribution to the practice,” said Dr Sandy Blair from the IPPHA.

Dr Blair says Dr Pearson recently received a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for a short course program which takes students to Tasmania, and he is also internationally known as a leading trainer at the front of the wave of change through the heritage management field.

For his part, Dr Pearson says work continues on as usual and for the same reasons that it started.

“I cannot separate the fascination of historical and archaeological research from the obligation to protect and conserve those heritage sites that are of value to the community, at whatever level,” he says.

Michael Pearson is the Chairman of the Institute for Professional Practice in Heritage and the Arts.