Who We Are

Professor Rhonda Oliver has researched extensively and is widely published in the areas of language and dialect acquisition, and task based language learning especially in relation to child and adolescent language learners in schools and universities. Her most recent work includes studies within Australian Aboriginal education settings. Her publications include her award-winning textbook, co-edited with Marnee Shay (UQ): Indigenous Education in Australia Learning and Teaching for Deadly Futures.

Kathryn Thorburn has lived and worked in the Kimberley region of North West WA since 2004. She has a PhD in political science from the Australian National University awarded in 2011, and retains a focus on issues of power, sovereignty and activism within the Kimberley, and at a national level. She has a long professional history of collaborating with Aboriginal people, especially in the West Kimberley, via research projects and while being employed by Aboriginal organisations. Her interests include Indigenous policy, its impacts on families and communities, economic development opportunities that enable people to flourish and to remain on country, and the carbon economy/renewable energy sectors in the Kimberley.

Dr. Robyn Ober is a Mamu/Djirribal woman from North Queensland and a Lead Researcher at Batchelor Institute, Northern Territory. Her association with Batchelor Institute spans three decades. Robyn has been at the front line of the development of both-ways pedagogy, working to combine Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing, being and learning in teaching practice and in research. Dr. Ober is a respected researcher in Indigenous educational leadership and both-ways teaching and learning, with her work appearing in conferences, journals and national reports. Dr Ober’s expertise has been called upon in numerous consultancies on education delivery, both-ways education, Indigenous research methodologies in the Northern Territory, national and international indigenous educational contexts.

Dr Catherine Holmes is a non-First Nations woman, based in Mparntwe. Her focus is building an evidence base for childhood policy and practice in fields related to education and care, predominantly in First Nations contexts. By combining education and anthropology, Catherine is committed to challenging assumptions and celebrating sociocultural practices. She has a PhD in child practices in the Ngaanyatjarra and Pintupi region of the Western Desert with the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy and Research (CAEPR) at the Australian National University (ANU). She also holds a Master of Education, a Bachelor of Early Childhood Education, a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and AMI 3-6 Montessori Training from Perugia, Italy.

Dr Helen McCarthy is a Senior Lecturer, On Country Teacher Education Program Manager at the School of Education, Curtin University, Perth. For over forty years as a teacher albeit apprentice, she has learned from the Warnindilyakwa, Yolngu, Nyungar and Wongi First Nations peoples of Australia, and observed parents and teachers express often dissatisfaction with the way mainstream anglo-centric education is imposed to their children. Her interest is in the development of holistic emergent curriculum frameworks that venerate Indigenous and non-Indigenous epistemological traditions that merges towards cross cultural alliance building.

Catherine Ridley is a Ngaanyatjarra/Pitjantatjarra on her mother’s side and a Wangkajunga/Martu woman on her father’s side. She is from Wangkatjungka Community on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert just out of Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Catherine is an Academic with an Undergraduate Bachelor Degree in Community Management and Development. She has 20 years of experience in the Public Sector, Government, and various Aboriginal Organisations. She currently sits on the Board of the Kimberley Aboriginal Women’s Council as a Director and is employed as a Researcher at the Nulungu Research Institute at the University of Notre Dame Broome Campus.

Stephanie Dryden is a PhD student and Research Assistant at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. She researches language rights and linguistic discrimination in the Australian context, with the aim of promoting the acceptance of linguistic diversity in Australia. She has published multiple journal articles, presented in conferences, and co-authored reports in this area.