Much of my work has been collaborative and interdisciplinary. I have worked with Indigenous Elders and cultural knowledge holders in Australia and overseas as a historian, curator and filmmaker documenting cultural and environmental heritage and protection. I was invited to document the late Bundjalung advocate, writer and filmmaker, Lorraine Mafi-Williams in her bush camp, which led to my PhD (in critical Indigenous Studies), documenting the tension around native title, the Stolen Generations and custodianship of sites of significance.

I have worked as a curator at the National Museum of Australia and, for over 10 years with the Vatican Museum's ethnographic section: Anima Mundi – Peoples, Arts, Cultures, where I culturally reconnected their Indigenous collections with source communities around the world and was instrumental in making the collections better known, bringing Indigenous community members and experts to the museum. I was centrally involved in the publication of 4 large format edited books of 400 pages each profiling Indigenous communities and the Anima Mundi collections: Ethnos (2012), The Americas (2015), Australia (2017) and Oceania (2022).

As well as curating inter-cultural, collaborative exhibitions in the Vatican Museums, I helped to bring the exhibition ‘‘So That You Might Know Each Other’: Faith and Culture in Islam’, to Australia (NMA 2018).

As a Research Fellow at the School of History, Culture and Languages. Working on issues of Repatriation, I combine ethnography with oral and social, cultural history. I am interested in Indigenous activism in relation to resource exploitation and cultural heritage, tangible, intangible culture, material expressions of culture and spirituality and how Indigenous Knowledge Systems have changed or adapted to different environments over deep time.

Communities and Community Organisations engagement:

Clans (or nations) in New South Wales since 1997: Bundjalung, Ngarakwal, Githabaul, Birripi, Thungutti. Community engagement from 2010 -2017: Tiwi people on Bathurst and Melville Islands (Northern Territory), Wunambal (Kalari) and Kwini language groups (Kalumburu, Western Australia) and Yuin community, New Norcia (Western Australia). Native and First Nations peoples in the Americas from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego regarding their museum collections (2011-2014). Specifically: Inuit and Yup’ik Kwakwakwatlu and Haid (Alaska), Lakota (South Dakota), Hopi, Pueblo peoples (New Mexico), Taino (Cuba), Koguis, Guahibos (Colombia), Shuar (Ecuador), Shipibo (Peru), Qom (Argentina), Yahgan (Chile). Quechua e Aymara (Andes Peru). Community engagement in Oceania includes in: Vanuatu, New Caledonia, French Polynesia (Marquesas, Mangareva, Tuamotu Islands), Hawaii, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Aotearoa New Zealand, Papua (Sepik River), Bougainville, Micronesia (Palau, Pohnpei, Chuuk, Guam).

BA(ANU) PhD(ANU)