Indigenous-led Research in Practice - NDRI April webinar
Wednesday 29 April - 11am AWST/1pm AEST
This 'Indigenous-led Research in Practice: Conversations with Aboriginal Researchers' webinar brings together leading Aboriginal researchers to reflect on the principles, practices, and impacts of Indigenous-led research across health, justice, and community settings.
Drawing on diverse projects and experiences, speakers will explore how Indigenous methodologies, knowledge systems, and leadership shape research that is culturally grounded, community-driven, and oriented towards meaningful change.
Together, the presentations highlight relational accountability, co-design, and Aboriginal ways of Knowing, Being, and Doing, while centring lived experience, redistributing power in research, and considering the role of non-Indigenous researchers as ethical and responsive allies.
Presenters
Facilitated by Dr Shelley Walker (National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University)
- Associate Professor Robyn Williams - Aboriginal Ways of Knowing, Being, and Doing in Responding to FASD in Noongar Country: Highlighting how Aboriginal methodologies create and sustain culturally secure pathways for reciprocity, trauma‑informed practice, and the urgent translation of research outcomes into meaningful action.
Robyn is a Noongar woman with extended family connections to the Gascoyne and Kimberley regions of Western Australia. With over 25 years experience across Aboriginal community organisations, government and academia, she is based at the Medical School, Curtin University. Her research focuses on the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal children, families and communities. Robyn is a national leader in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) research, shaping policy and advancing Aboriginal-led approaches that strengthen outcomes for families and communities.
- Associate Professor Jocelyn Jones - "Nobody Has Asked Us Before”: From Silence to Leadership in Custodial Research: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young men in custody are rarely recognised as knowledge holders and owners of their own stories. This presentation advances an Aboriginal lived experience and strengths-based approach that is grounded in Aboriginal-led, culturally governed ways of working and draws on a custodial research project that positions incarcerated young men, prison Elders, mentors and house uncles as co-researchers who shape research and knowledge production. We show how power and ownership are actively redistributed through cultural governance and relational accountability.
Jocelyn is a Wadjuk, Ballardong and Palyku woman from Western Australia. She is a Vice-Chancellor Professoriate Research Fellow within Kurongkurl Katitjin at Edith Cowan University. Her work focuses on Aboriginal health, justice and policy, and has extensive experience working across Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, government and research settings.
- Professor Kelly Menzel - Working the Right Way: Indigenous-Led Research and the Role of Allies: Indigenous-led research requires more than inclusion, it requires different ways of working. Using a current project focused on carers of Aboriginal children with emerging developmental needs as a case example, this presentation explores how Indigenous leadership, relational accountability and ethical partnerships shape research practice, and considers how allies can support rather than dominate research processes.
Kelly is a proud Ngadjuri woman from the mid-north of South Australia with ancestral connections to the Bundjalung Nation. She is Director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Initiative at Burnet Institute. Her work focuses on Indigenous research methodologies, Indigenous knowledge systems, and transforming research practice within universities and communities. She has contributed to national conversations on Indigenous-led scholarship and the place of Indigenous knowledges within the academy.
Click here to register
Posted on: 7 Apr 2026
news list