Prof Amanda Kearney

Amanda Kearney (University of Melbourne, Australia, Ph.D. 2005) is a professor of anthropology who specializes in the “anthropology of human resilience and future security.” Amanda has led the devleopment of a post-conventional Anthropology, hotwired for a broader social contract. She has held tenured professorial roles at leading universities, including the San Diego State University in California, US (present), University of New South Wales, the University of Melbourne, and the University of Adelaide in Australia, where she was appointed the Inaugural Kidman Chair of Australian Studies. She has also held visiting scholar roles at the University of Brasilia, Federal University of Bahia, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg and the University of Southern Denmark. 

Kearney’s career has been distinguished by an over 26-year commitment to ethnography and collaborative co-designed research with Indigenous families in remote northern and central Australia. In these contexts, her research has developed with the kind support and intellectual generosity of Yanyuwa, Marra, Garrwa and Gudanji peoples, whose lands and waters are located in the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia and Aṉangu – the Indigenous owners of lands and waters in central Australia, including Uluru. These collaborations have led to several co-authored works, including two books: “Indigenous Law and the politics of kincentricity & orality” (Palgrave Macmillan - open access) and “Jakarda wuka (Too many stories): Narratives of Yanyuwa sea Country and rock art from northern Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria” (USyd Press).

Kearney has designed the first Doctor of Science program in Applied Anthropology in the US, and her current research program focuses on pluralism and plural knowledges, kincentric ecologies, and cross-cultural approaches to offsetting conflict, and ecological precarity. She has received five federally funded major grants and extensive donor funding. 

In conjunction with her academic career, Kearney has sustained a commitment to consulting and applied anthropology. She regularly provides expert advice on matters of refugee and intercultural community initiatives, Indigenous cultural heritage, offshore oil and gas activity and Indigenous rights, intercultural ethics, and corporate social responsibility. Her Indigenous community-appointed roles have allowed her to collaborate with Indigenous families in their pursuit of land and sea rights, autonomy in land and sea management, education reform and creative pathways towards sharing knowledge of law and culture across generations.

Kearney is also the current editor-in-Chief of Anthropological Forum, a journal committed to identifying and nurturing the future of anthropology in a rapidly changing world. 

PhD, University of Melbourne, 2005

B.Arts Honours (Anthropology), University of Queensland, 1998

B.Arts (Anthropology), University of Queensland, 1997

• Applied Anthropology/Engaged Anthropology
• Post-conventional Anthropology
• Ethnography
• Indigenous land and sea rights
• Maritime cultures
• Plural knowledges
• Ecological precarity
• Reflexivity
• Ocean crises and climate change