Centring First Nations Knowledge

Authors

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  Tony Birch

  Tony Birch is the author of four novels: Women & Children, which won the 2024 The Age Fiction Book of the Year; The White Girl, winner of the 2020 NSW Premier’s Award for Indigenous Writing, and shortlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award; Ghost River, winner of the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing; and Blood, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2012. He has also published two poetry books and four short story collections, the most recent of which, Dark as Last Night, won both the 2022 NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction. In 2017 he was awarded the Patrick White Literary Award. Tony Birch is an activist, historian and essayist, and is currently the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne. Pictures of You: Collected Stories is his latest book.
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  Anita Heiss

  Anita Heiss (Wiradyuri Nation) is an internationally published author of over 20 books across genres.
  
  Her best-selling novel Tiddas was adapted for the stage and premiered at the Brisbane Festival in 2022. Her novel Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Prize.
  Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray won the 2022 NSW Premier’s Literary Prize for Indigenous Writing, and was shortlisted for the 2021 HNSA ARA Historical Novel.
  
  Anita is an Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and Professor of Communications at the University of Queensland. She is also Publisher at Large for Bundyi Publishing, a First Nations imprint with Simon & Schuster Australia.
  
  Anita's curated events are:

  • Mother Tongue: Writing Matriarchies
  • Centring First Nations Knowledge
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  Eddie Cubillo

  Professor Eddie Cubillo is a Larrakia, Wadjigan and Central Arrernte man and a leading scholar of Indigenous jurisprudence, legal education, and self-determination.
  
  He is founding Director of the Indigenous Law and Justice Hub and inaugural Director of the Mabo Centre at the University of Melbourne, and has held senior roles across Indigenous legal services, statutory bodies, and national justice policy.
  
  His award-winning research on Indigenous governance and legal services informs curriculum reform, community-led research, and national debates on justice, law, and Indigenous sovereignty.
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  JM Field

  Dr JM Field (Spearim) is a Gamilaraay mari from Moree way, but grew up on Darug land in a small town along the Great Dividing Range. He studied maths and French literature at the University of Sydney, before completing a doctorate at Balliol College, Oxford. He remains a research mathematician, with a focus on the mathematics and genetics of traditional kinship systems.
  
  His latest book, The Eagle & the Crow, explores the philosophical and practical complexities of Gamilaraay kinship through a series of lyric essays.
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  Julie Andrews

  Julie Andrews OAM is from an Aboriginal family who have been instrumental in establishing Aboriginal Victorian organisations and interstate. She is the author of Where’s all the community? Aboriginal Melbourne revisited. The book is adapted from her PhD thesis of the same title.
  
  Her academic career began with student activism, progressing to teaching and research and higher education policy. Her research is committed to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community topics. She leads the Gabra Biik, Wurruwila Wutja (Clever Country, Clever People) research centre at La Trobe University.