First Knowledges: Innovation

Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt AO is a Eualayai/Gamillaroi woman and the Laureate Fellow at the Jumbunna Institute at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is an award-winning author and filmmaker. Larissa won a 2005 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for her novel Home. Her second novel, Legacy, won a Victorian Premiers Literary Award. Her most recent novel is the best-selling After Story, which was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award and won the Voss Prize. Her non-fiction works include Finding Eliza, Indigenous Australia for Dummies and Indigenous Australia for Kids. Larissa won the 2018 Australian Directors Guild Award for After the Apology and the 2020 AACTA for Best Direction in Factual Television for Maralinga Tjarutja. She was awarded an Order of Australia for her work in Indigenous education, the law and arts. She is the host of Speaking Out on ABC Radio.

Ian McNiven is a Professor of Indigenous Archaeology at Monash University. Over the past 40 years, he has worked with more than 50 First Nations communities in Australia and Papua New Guinea. He has authored 18 books on Indigenous archaeology and history. McNiven is passionate about working with and for Indigenous communities.

Professor Lynette Russell is an award-winning historian and Indigenous studies scholar. Her research is broadly focused on anthropological history. Russell has published widely in the areas of theory, Indigenous histories, post-colonialism and representations of race, museum studies and popular culture.