Philip Jones, graduated in Law in 1978 (University of Adelaide) and in 1980 took a First Class Honours degree in History, specialising in French social history (University of Adelaide). His interest in Aboriginal studies developed from social history research, and he began volunteer work at the South Australian Museum in 1981.

His doctoral thesis (University of Adelaide 1996) concerns Aboriginal ethnographic collecting in Australia and is titled 'A Box of Native Things: Ethnographic Collectors and the South Australian Museum, 1830s - 1930s'. It deals with the history of anthropology and collections made on the frontiers of Aboriginal/European contact. The research underpinning this thesis provoked the narratives and ideas that became the main stories in Ochre and Rust. In 2008, Ochre and Rust was the inaugural winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. It was republished by Wakefield Press in 2018.