Jilda Andrews is a Yuwaalaraay cultural practitioner and museum ethnographer based in Canberra, Australia. She draws from her heritage to recognise the cultural ecologies surrounding objects in museum collections. Her focus on material culture and their cultural worlds continue to push the definition of custodianship, from one that focuses on the preservation of objects, to one that is active in maintaining connections between cultural material and the dynamic systems that produce them.

PhD, GradDip (Digital Media), BA (MediaComm)(Hons1)

My area of research expertise is in ethnographic collections in museums from Australian origins, the exhibition and display of ethnographic collections in museum contexts and ongoing relationships of exchange with Indigenous source communities including repatriation.

I also have experience in working with the exhibition and display of environmental and Indigenous histories in Australian and global contexts with a focus on intercultural multidimentionality.

The research facilities and techniques I use include public exhibition and display, autoethnography, applications of Indigenous philosophical concepts such as relationality, ecological thinking, cyclical time and cultural burning in practical applications in contemporary museum practice.  

Emerging from extensive experience at the interface of practice and theory, I am increasingly engaging with Indigenous futures as a framework and suite of tools to activate and apply research in service to cultural continuities and strong cultural futures.