Corioli Souter

Corioli Souter is a curator, archaeologist, and head of the Department of Maritime Heritage at the Western Australian Museum (WAM) often working in collaboration with other state, national, international museums and collections; tertiary institutions; heritage agencies; community organisations and the private sector. She has been a practicing archaeologist since 1992 undertaking archaeological fieldwork, research, exhibition development, film documentaries and capacity building and teaching in Australia and abroad. Corioli holds a BA in Archaeology (University of Sydney), post graduate qualifications in Maritime Archaeology (Curtin University), an MA in Archaeology (University of Western Australia) and is nearing completion of her PhD (Deakin University) along with commercial diving qualifications.

She has developed and contributed to interagency research and community projects in line with WAM’s ‘people-first’ philosophy which provide place-based, collaborative interpretation of maritime archaeological sites in Western Australia and the Indian Ocean region. She was a lead curator for Boola Bardip, the new museum project for Western Australia from its inception, working with the team to develop the conceptual and thematic frameworks and later curating content. Corioli is passionate about making UCH and its related museum collections accessible to all researchers and the public and endeavours to incorporate critical approaches to maritime archaeology and collection interpretation with consideration of current issues—such as environmental sustainability—while maintaining ethical and inclusive best practice.