Virginia Marshall featured in the list of '52 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people changing the world'

To mark national NAIDOC Week, which celebrates and recognises the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the quarterly Australian science magazine Cosmos teamed up with the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) and Australia’s five Learned Academies to publish a list of ‘52 leading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are changing the world’.

In launching the list to mark NAIDOC Week, ACOLA Board Chair Professor Richard Holden, expressed pleasure in being able to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers and scientists, while ACOLA CEO Ryan Winn commented that ‘their work builds upon the tens of thousands of years of knowledge created by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on their lands’.

Four of the Australian National University current researchers were featured in the list of 52 - including Wiradjuri Nyemba woman, Dr Virginia Marshall, a leading legal scholar on Indigenous Australian water rights who is a Research Fellow at ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance. Also featured are Professor Alex Brown, a Yuin man, who is Professor of Indigenous Genomics at ANU (in addition to holding other Professorial roles); Professir Ray Lovett, an Ngiyampaa/Wongaibon man, who is a social epidemiologist and the Mayi Kuwayu Study Director at ANU; and Dr Sarah Bourke who is a Gidja, Jaru, Gamilaroi woman born and raised on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, who is a Research Fellow at ANU’s National Centre for Epidemiology and population Health.

The full list of the 52 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are ‘changing the world’ can be found here.