The Australian Centre
The Australian Centre fosters world-leading research on the settler state, its culture, institutions, sovereignty and identities across several different disciplines, including history, sociology, literature, politics, visual arts and anthropology. Building upon the foundational work of the Indigenous Settler Relations Collaboration, a Research Unit in the Faculty of Arts (2018-2021), the Centre’s research programs are guided by an ethical imperative to consider what must be done to inform, shape and give life to more just relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples on this continent we now call Australia.
Established in 1989, the Australian Centre has a long history of supporting scholarship on colonial and contemporary Australian society and culture. We focus on deepening our understanding of the challenges inherent in our colonial history and engage in research and education that drives a more engaged, responsible and respectful approach to Indigenous Settler relations.
Seed funding
The Australian Centre is inviting proposals for its 2023 Seed Funding Round

What we do
The Australian Centre aims to foster a critical examination of Australian society, culture and history, with an interdisciplinary focus on settler colonialism and its institutions.
The Centre offers a rich program of research and activity that includes:
- Research that critically engages with settler colonialism and its institutions
- Events and critical conversations that inform and shape more just relations between Indigenous and settler peoples
- An education program that enables others to take up the work of advancing a critical understanding of Australia as a colonial project and engage in the transformation of the nation
- Partnerships and projects and work closely with industry, government, NGOs, and community organisations.
Our program
Our program is shaped by a series of provocations that consider how Australia’s founding as a settler colony informs our capacity to engage with the central challenges of our time:
- How, where, and for whom, does “Australia” (and other settler states) manifest and sustain itself?
- The connections between sovereignty, Country, land and environment, focusing on the relationship between colonisation and climate change.
- Who is a host and who is a guest in this place? How does the ongoing colonisation of Australia impact our ability to welcome others to these shores?


Preparing for Treaty
An important part of our work is the education we provide to individuals and organisations in preparing for treaty negotiations.
Melbourne MicroCerts
- Understanding Treaty: Gain the skills and knowledge to engage with contemporary treaty negotiations
- Indigenous and Other Sovereignties: Extend your understanding of Indigenous sovereignty and explore how it can shape treaty negotiations.
- Lawful relations with Indigenous peoples: Explore the concept of lawful relations and the role of Indigenous rights in treaty processes
- Recognition, reconciliation, refusal: explore the place of Indigenous recognition, reconciliation, and refusal in contemporary treaty processes
The Professional Certificate in Treaty
- Add Indigenous Governance Principles to this series of Melbourne MicroCerts and you will complete Australia’s first Professional Certificate in Treaty
Donate to our Treaty Education Fund and support First Nations people participating in this education program.
Prizes
Peter Blazey Fellowship
This fellowship is awarded annually to writers in the non-fiction fields of biography, autobiography and life writing to further a work in progress.
Kate Challis RAKA Award
This award advances the recognition of Indigenous creative artists and follows a five-year cycle with a different area of the arts supported each year – creative prose, drama, the visual arts, plays and poetry.


Engage our services
The Australian Centre is always open to developing new research partnerships and projects and works closely with industry, government, NGOs, and community organisations. If you are interested in working with us, please email aust-centre@unimelb.edu.au with your name, affiliation and a brief description of your work.
The Australian Centre team
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Director
Phone: +61383444552
Email: sarah.maddison@unimelb.edu.au -
Deputy Director
Phone: +61390359990
Email: julia.hurst@unimelb.edu.au -
Lecturer in Treaty
Phone: +61383441805
Email: matt.campbell1@unimelb.edu.au -
Centre Coordinator
Phone: +61383448463
Email: bianca.williams@unimelb.edu.au -
Research Coordinator
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Research Coordinator
Phone: +61383441276
Email: eleanor.benson@unimelb.edu.au -
Education Coordinator
Email: rebecca.howe@unimelb.edu.au
Advisory board
Learn more about the advisory board terms of reference (PDF).
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Senior Lecturer, Indigenous Studies (Partnerships)
Phone: +61383445869
Email: lou.bennett@unimelb.edu.au -
Professor of Screen and Cultural Studies
Phone: +61383445484
Email: clhealy@unimelb.edu.au -
Chief Executive Officer, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS)
Email: craig.ritchie@aiatsis.gov.au
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Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung artist
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Head of School, Social and Political Sciences
Phone: +61383443352
Email: jbalint@unimelb.edu.au -
Associate Professor
Phone: +61390357696
Email: jessica.gerrard@unimelb.edu.au -
Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Studies
Phone: +61383442156
Email: kim.alley@unimelb.edu.au -
Director of First Nations Health for medical education
Phone: +61390354763
Email: ngaree.b@unimelb.edu.au -
Professor in Linguistics
Phone: +61383444227
Email: racheln@unimelb.edu.au -
Deputy Dean, External Relations
Phone: +61383449975
Email: s.wills@unimelb.edu.au
Fellows
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Pro Vice-chancellor (International)
Phone: +61383448969
Email: little@unimelb.edu.au -
Hellenic Senior Lecturer in Global Diasporas
Phone: +61383446420
Email: andonis.piperoglou@unimelb.edu.au -
Professor in Australian History
Phone: +61383447562
Email: a.may@unimelb.edu.au -
Senior Lecturer in Sociology
Phone: +61383444559
Email: ashley.barnwell@unimelb.edu.au -
Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow
Email: arlie.alizzi@unimelb.edu.au
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Lecturer
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Lecturer in Indigenous Studies Teaching Specialist
Phone: +61383447484
Email: cameo.dalley@unimelb.edu.au -
Senior Lecturer, Law
Phone: +61383444091
Email: erin.odonnell@unimelb.edu.au -
Research Fellow (Impact and Evaluation)
Phone: +61383446982
Email: fiona.belcher@unimelb.edu.au -
Professor in Anthropology and Social Theory
Email: ghage@unimelb.edu.au
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Associate Professor in Creative Writing
Phone: +61383441307
Email: j.leane@unimelb.edu.au -
Head of School, Social and Political Sciences
Phone: +61383443352
Email: jbalint@unimelb.edu.au -
Associate Professor
Phone: +61390357696
Email: jessica.gerrard@unimelb.edu.au -
Professor in Sociology
Phone: +61390356220
Email: karen.farquharson@unimelb.edu.au -
Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Studies
Phone: +61383442156
Email: kim.alley@unimelb.edu.au -
Professor
Phone: +61383447960
Email: kgover@unimelb.edu.au -
Senior Lecturer
Email: ligia.lopez@unimelb.edu.au
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Lecturer in Public Policy
Email: liz.strakosch@unimelb.edu.au
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Senior Lecturer, Indigenous Studies (Partnerships)
Phone: +61383445869
Email: lou.bennett@unimelb.edu.au
Affiliated researchers
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Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at RMIT School of Art
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Chancellors’ Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney
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Chief Executive Officer, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS)
Email: craig.ritchie@aiatsis.gov.au
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Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Guelph
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Associate Professor in Public Policy, Crawford School in Public Policy, Australian National University
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Professor of Politics at Babson College
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Honorary Senior Fellow in the Australian Centre, teaches history and politics at Swinburne University of Technology
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Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Queensland
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Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations, the University of New South Wales
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Associate Professor in First Nations and Indigenous Studies, the University of British Columbia
The Australian Centre's hugely popular Critical Public Conversations (CPC) series is the Centre's flagship public event offering.
The Critical Public Conversation (CPC) series aims to enrich the university's social, cultural, and intellectual life and beyond by facilitating conversations that explore the challenges at the heart of relations between Indigenous and settler peoples in a respectful and considerate manner. By making explicit the fraught foundations of this relationship and its centrality to the politics of this continent, the series develops capacity for scholarship that is more ethical and academically rigorous.
Each year the presentations are organised around a central theme. Previous themes include:
- Introducing Critical Public Conversations - Semester one,2020
- What does success in Indigenous Higher education look like? - Semester two, 2020
- Exploring Indigenous Settler Relations - 2021
- Undoing Australia - 2022

Country, Climate, Colonialism
In 2023, the Australian Centre’s Critical Public Conversations webinar series will focus on the relationship between Country, Climate, Colonialism. The series seeks to interrogate the settler state’s incapacity to manage the ecology of this continent and will highlight the ways in which First Nations care for, and obligations to, Country are inextricably bound to questions of sovereignty. The webinar series will showcase research and activism that explores what it means to care for Country and do environmental work in the context of ongoing colonial occupation.
Upcoming Critical Public Conversations Webinars
Previous Critical Public Conversations
Engage with recordings from previous Critical Public Conversation webinars.
The Australian Centre supports graduate research work in Indigenous settler relations
Interdisciplinary Graduate Research Program in Indigenous Settler Relations
The Interdisciplinary Graduate Research Program in Indigenous Settler Relations is open to graduate researchers in any faculty undertaking graduate research related to the emerging field of Indigenous settler relations in Australia and the world. The program enriches the graduate research experience by creating a strong cohort and intellectual community that assists students in developing their post-degree pathways.
The program connects students with researchers across disciplines, fostering an engaged and supportive intellectual community, and creating a strong cohort experience for the duration of their study. The program deepens academic understandings, and enhances interdisciplinary knowledge exchange on research that leads to more just relations between Indigenous and settler peoples. Students are supported to build networks across the University and with relevant external organisations and to develop their research in reference to current real-world challenges.
Activities throughout the year include exclusive masterclasses, a research symposium, writing retreats, and a reading group, as well as access to the suite of public seminars, lectures and film screenings run by the Australian Centre. Opportunities are available to meet regularly throughout each semester to share research progress and to participate in writing sessions, critical reading groups and workshops focused on ethics, research methodology and approaches for communicating research to diverse audiences across and beyond the academy.
Applications to join the program are called for twice a year, with start year intake applications closing in early February and mid-year entry closing in late June. Students can join the program at any time during their candidature and remain part of the program until the completion of their studies. Timely completion of the thesis remains the priority, with the program intended to enhance the experience of advanced research training and aid graduation pathways.
Reading Group
The Australian Centre runs a critical reading group each semester based on an academic text. Our monthly meetings bring together graduate researchers, early career researchers and senior academics across myriad disciplines to discuss the chosen text, generating new ideas and relationships. If you are interested in joining the Australian Centre reading group, please email us a few brief sentences about yourself and your research.
2023 Reading Group
The 2023 Reading Group will cover the following texts:
- Semester 1, 2023 - Pollution Is Colonialism, Max Liboiron.
- Semester 2, 2023 - Public Policy and Indigenous Futures, eds. Nikki Moodie and Sarah Maddison
Our reading group is conducted via Zoom and not face-to-face
The 2022 Reading Group covered the following materials:
- Semester 1, 2022 - Indigenous Futures and Learnings Taking Place, eds. Ligia (Licho) López López and Gioconda Coello
- Semester 2, 2022 - Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States, Kevin Bruyneel
Previous Reading Groups hosted by the Indigenous Settler Relations Collaboration
- 2021 – Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies, eds. Brendan Hokowhitu, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Linda Tuhiwai-Smith, Chris Andersen, Steve Larkin
- Semester 2, 2020 – Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, Glen Coulthard
- Winter 2020 – So white. So what, Alison Whittaker and Decolonisation is Not a Metaphor, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang
- Semester 1, 2020 – Questioning Indigenous-Settler Relations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, eds. Sarah Maddison and Sana Nakata
- Semester 2, 2019 – Indigenous and Decolonising Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View, eds. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang
- Semester 1 2019 – As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Graduate Researcher Support
The team would love to hear from current or prospective graduate research students undertaking study related to the emerging field of Indigenous settler relations. The team can assist with:
- Identifying potential supervisors
- Support with application processes
- Engaged research support for existing PhD and Masters by Research students
- Networking opportunities with Fellows and affiliated researchers
Students at all levels are welcome to subscribe to the Australian Centre mailing list to hear of other opportunities to get involved.
Understand the opportunities and challenges of treaty for transforming relations between First Nations and settler societies
The Australian Centre's Treaty Education explores how treaties function in relations between Indigenous peoples and contemporary settler societies. You will learn to analyse how treaties have shaped past interactions and to understand the possibilities they open for future relations. Key to this is understanding the concept of contested sovereignty as foundational to the contemporary state. These analytical skills are crucial to developing successful treaties and lawful relations with Indigenous people.
Melbourne MicroCert Series
Gain the skills, knowledge and understanding to begin meaningful treaty negotiations
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Understanding Treaty
Gain a deeper understanding of treaty and agreement-making between Indigenous peoples and settler states
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Indigenous and Other Sovereignties
Extend your understanding of Indigenous sovereignty and explore how it can shape treaty negotiations
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Lawful Relations with Indigenous Peoples
Gain a deeper understanding of the international legal frameworks pivotal to treaty negotiations between Indigenous peoples and settler states
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Recognition, Reconciliation, Refusal
Analyse Indigenous practices of recognition, reconciliation, and refusal as they relate to treaty-making
Add Indigenous Governance Principles to this series of Melbourne MicroCerts and you will complete Australia’s first Professional Certificate in Treaty
Donate to support First Nations’ access to this MicroCert series
Individuals and organisations are invited to contribute to the Treaty Education Scholarship Fund. Your investment will help more Indigenous people access these MicroCert series who might otherwise be unable to participate.
Current collection of the Australian Centre projects, publications and resources
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Projects
View a selection of current and completed projects that have been undertaken by the Australian Centre.
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Publications
View a selection of books, book chapters, journal articles, conference papers and the Springer Book Series published by academics associated with the Australian Centre
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Resources
Collection of past recordings and newsletters
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The Australian Centre Seed Funding 2023
The Australian Centre is inviting proposals for its 2023 Seed Funding Round
Keep up to date with current news and upcoming Australian Centre events