Indigenous Studies: Bringing Knowledge Forward

Day 1 – Wednesday 28 October 2026  

Time  

Session  

Panel / Session Title  

Details / Panellists  

10:30am–10:45am  

Acknowledgement and housekeeping  

Acknowledgement: Aunty Glendra Stubbs, UTS Elder-in-Residence

Opening: 

Professor Kyas Hepworth

(Associate Dean, Indigenous Leadership and Engagement, Faculty of Design & Society)

10:45am–11:15am  

Morning tea  

11:15am–12:30pm  

Panel Discussion

Country as Teacher: Looking Back and Looking Forward  

The Country as Teacher project has been operating for over five years, with steady success embedding Indigenous knowledge into school curricula. Join the people at the heart of the academic work for a discussion of the past and future of Country as Teacher in schools and universities.   

Panel host/lead: 

Professor Benny Wilson (Institute of Education, Faculty of Design & Society)

Panellists:

David Spillman is a man with obligations to Jagera/Ugarapul Country and who underwent his cultural learning on Karulkiyalu Country. He is one of the co-founders of the Country as Teacher approach and was the first to implement it in university classrooms. He is a well-respected and widely referenced educator and researcher. 

Jordan Harrison is a former research assistant on the Country as Teacher research project, and co-founder and facilitator of the Country as Teacher Practitioner Network. His passions lie in the Dolphins finals hopes and invigorating humans desire to know, love and care for the places they live.

Monty Nixon is a PhD candidate, former research assistant on the Country as Teacher research project, lecturer and co-founder of the Country as Teacher Practitioner Network. His work seeks to help teachers embed their practice in Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing that centre learning from and caring for Country.

Eli Archer is a Palawa woman, mother, educator, and artist. Her main interest is in reinvigorating Indigenous pedagogical processes in schools in order to help students and families know and understand their local places, explore their own stories of relationship and connection to those places, and live their obligation and commitment to care for them.

12:30pm–1:30pm  

Lunch  

1:30pm–3:00pm  

Panel Discussion  

winhangali bu winhangagi bu ngurambang gu  

Western cartographic practices have caused ongoing harm to Country, Aboriginal Peoples and cultural belonging by supporting terra nullius, dispossession, erasure and extraction, while Indigenous mapping practices have long held radically different relationships and obligations to Country. Through Aboriginal, migrant and diasporic Australian perspectives, this panel explores counter-mapping as an act of refusal and a way to assert and defend relationships with Country, home and homeland(s).   

Panel host/lead: 

Matte Ager-McConnell (Lecturer, Discipline of Architecture, Faculty of Design & Society) 

Panellists:

Dr Endriana Audisho, Lecturer and Public Programs Director, School of Architecture, UTS

Dr Suneel Jethani, Senior Lecturer in Digital and Social Media, School of Communication, UTS

Bernadette Hardy (nee Bellwood), Dharug & Gamilaraay spatial designer, PhD researcher and co-leader of hardyhardy, an interior and industrial design studio based on Dharug Nura. B offers strategic cultural design and autistic (as a form of neurodivergence) spatial design advice for projects in the built environment space, actively raising the voice of Country and autistic culture in the design process.

3:00pm–3:30pm  

Afternoon tea  

3:30pm–5:00pm  

Roundtable Panel Discussion

Indigenous Higher Degree Research Trajectories: Travelling with and alongside the academy  

Pathways in and out of PhD research are increasingly diverse and open-ended. This roundtable considers the opportunities, challenges and unexpected turns in higher degree research in Indigenous Studies and research with Indigenous communities.  

Panellists:  

Dr Latoya Aroha Rule is a research fellow at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education & Research at UTS, descending from Wiradjuri, Te Ātiawa, and Norwegian peoples. Driven by the lived experience of witnessing the 2016 death in custody of their elder brother, Wayne Fella Morrison, their work focuses on Indigenous justice, systemic violence, and anti-torture reform. Over the past decade, they have advanced Indigenous legal issues through major contributions both academically and creatively at the community, national and international levels. They were a co-author of the recently launched inaugural Federal Bench Book on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and the Legal System. Additionally, Dr. Rule has co-led international research on the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ with First Nations, Māori & Hawaiin communities, presented to high-level forums including the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, and most critically worked with First Nations women and their communities on the issue of coronial inquests. 

Dr Grant Saunders, Writer/Director/Producer, UNSW.

Grant is a Biripi-Worimi creative researcher with over 20 years' experience in the field of Aboriginal education and media. He has been teaching Aboriginal studies in the higher education context on and off for the past 12 years, recently completed his Doctor of Creative Arts at the UTS, and is now the newest academic member of Nura Gili, Centre for Indigenous Programs at UNSW. His creative doctorate was underpinned by Indigenous theoretical frameworks, Critical Race Theory, auto-ethnography, outsider- criminology, Hip Hop Pedagogy and practice-based research. His creative work ‘Hip Hop and the Block’ and supporting exegesis ‘JustUS: What Hip-hop Wants you to Know’ use discourse and reflexive thematic analysis to critically deconstruct and visualise the lyrics of Indigenous Hip Hop artists to tell the story of The Block, Redfern, Aboriginal self-determination, criminal justice and the emancipating truth-telling power of Hip Hop music. nevieve Murray, Lecturer in Architecture, University of Sydney 

Chair: Associate Professor Timothy Laurie, Higher Degree Research Coordinator, School of Communication and Social Sciences, Faculty of Design and Society  

5:00pm–5:30pm  

Networking and break

5:30pm–7:00pm  

Keynote session #1

Tony Birch – Keynote address  

Title:  

A writing life – Tony Birch in conversation with Anna Clark

Acknowledgement: Aunty Glendra Stubbs, UTS Elder-in-Residence

Introduction by: Professor Kyas Hepworth (Associate Dean, Indigenous Leadership and Engagement, Faculty of Design & Society)  

Speakers:  

Professor Tony Birch, Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature 

School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne 

Professor Anna Clark, Australian Centre for Public History, UTS 

Day 2 – Thursday 29 October   

10:30am–10:45am  

Arrival and morning tea  

10:45am–11:00am  

Acknowledgement and housekeeping  

11:00am–12:15pm  

Panel Discussion

Is Agri-Solar (Agrivoltaics) the "Key to Energy Security and Self-Determination"?  

Could agrivoltaics help remote First Nations communities achieve energy and food security, create local on-Country employment and improve biodiversity management? This panel examines research using agrivoltaics to reduce carbon footprints, strengthen local food production and deliver educational outcomes.   

Panellists:  

Dr Allan Teale, School of Architecture and Built Environment 

Steve Jones, Ochre Ventures 

Peter Irga, UTS researcher  

12:15pm–1:00pm  

Lunch  

1:00pm–1:45pm  

Paper Presentation

My journey as a Koori Girl from Beach to University and Academia, and all that is in between  

Presenter:  

Frances Grant, Lecturer, Social and Political Sciences, Faculty of Design & Society 

Frances Grant will share her story of growing up in social housing, developing her aspirations, and her journey to becoming an academic at UTS and beginning her PhD.   

1:45pm–2:45pm  

Panel Discussion

Media Literacy in Communities  

How do we get good information out to communities? This panel will use case studies from Media Diversity Australia and its relationships to explore what media literacy means and how this meets (or does not meet) community needs. Format: In-conversation discussion.   

Panel lead:
Associate Professor Liz Guiffre, Journalism, Faculty of Design & Society 

Panellists:

Paula Kruger, Peta MacGillivray and Tasha James – specialists in Australian media, communications and the contemporary media landscape, bringing perspectives from industry, broadcasting and community engagement 

2:45pm–3:15pm  

Afternoon tea 

3:15pm–4:45pm  

Panel Discussion

Sovereign Stories: New Indigenous Writing and Literary Leadership

Inaugural Copyright Agency–UTS Indigenous Writers' Fellows Mykaela Saunders and Darby Jones talk with author and UTS Creative Writing lecturer Tess Scholfield-Peters about new work, cultural authority on the page, and what literary leadership asks of emerging Indigenous writers.

Panellists:   

Mykaela Saunders   

Darby Jones   

Lead: Tess Schofield, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Faculty of Design & Society 

4:45pm–5:00pm  

Closing  

5:00pm–5:30pm  

Networking and break

5:30pm–7:00pm  

Keynote session #2

 Power, institutions and the public good

Introduction by Professor James Bennett, Faculty of Design & Society

Speakers:  

Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt AO, Laureate Fellow, Jumbunna Institute  

Dr Archie Thomas, Chancellors Research Fellow, Social & Political Sciences, Faculty of Design & Society