Honorary appointments
An Honorary Appointment is a voluntary arrangement which entitles esteemed researchers and academics to actively engage with Northern Institute (NI) staff and students.
Our Honoraries contribute their expertise by collaborating on joint social and policy research projects and/or publications, supervising or mentoring Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students, providing lectures, seminars or workshops in their area of expertise or fostering strategic relationships between NI and its academic, professional, governmental, business, industrial and community partners.
Alphabetical listing
Professor Allan Dale
University Fellow
: +61 418 736 422
: The Cairns Institute, James Cook University
Cairns, QLD
Allan has a strong interest in integrated natural resource policy and management in northern Australia. He has both extensive research and policy expertise in governance systems and integrated natural resource management. He is Chair of Regional Development Australian Far North Queensland and Torres Strait. His past research helped inform the policy and investment foundations for the nation’s regional natural resource management system, and he was also responsible for natural resource policy in Queensland Government. Allan has also been the CEO of the Wet Tropics Regional NRM Body before returning to this international research role. As Leader – Tropical Regional Development at The Cairns Institute of JCU, he also accesses an international network of research expertise in the governance field, with particularly strong linkages throughout Charles Darwin University, Griffith University and CSIRO.
Dr Ana Vuin
University Fellow
: +61 8 8946 6547
: Casuarina campus, CDU
Ana has a PhD in Human Geography and is interested in researching regional, rural, and sparsely populated areas and communities. For her dissertation topic, Ana examined in-migration to depopulating SPAs in three different countries through a conceptual framework that explored the in-migration effects on the migrant, place, and community. During her PhD Candidate, Ana spent one semester as a visiting scholar at the Arctic Research Centre at Umea University and collaborated with The Centre for Rural Medicine (GMC) in Northern Sweden. During her time in Sweden, she gained teaching experience delivering a master’s degree course (Qualitative Research Methods: Data Collection and Analysis) with her co-supervisor.
Ana is currently collaborating on several papers looking into the medical education programs and their applicability to rural-based health professions, the implications of attempted revitalization strategies and activity bursts in rural areas, COVID-19 mobility restrictions and implications and COVID-19 impact on the international workforce in the EU.
Professor Anne Poelina
Adjunct Professor
: +61 (0)408 922 155
: Madjulla Inc. Broome, WA
Professor Anne Poelina is the Managing Director of Madjulla Inc., an Indigenous not-for-profit non-government community development organisation; Deputy Chair of the Nyikina Mangala Aboriginal Corporation, Deputy Chair of the Northern Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance Indigenous Water Policy Group and is an inaugural member of the recently formed National First Peoples Water Council.
An indigenous woman raised in Western Australia, Anne is passionate about sharing her life experiences with all people to demonstrate how marginalised people can overcome difficult situations by building their capacity to engage with others. She has a strong history of working to improve the disadvantaged lives experienced by Indigenous Australians and a strong academic background with diplomas in Nursing (RN), Aboriginal Studies and Health Education, three master's degrees in Education, Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and Indigenous Social Policy.
Barbara White
University Fellow
Profile coming soon
Dr Benxiang Zeng
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
Dr Benxiang Zeng holds a PhD in the area of International Tourism Management from the University of Queensland, Australia. Dr Zeng is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University (CDU). He is based in Alice Springs, The Northern Territory, Australia.
Dr Catherine Williams
Adjunct Research Fellow
Profile coming soon
Dr Don Zoellner
University Fellow
: +61 8 8959 5259
: Alice Springs, NT
- Vocational Education and Training (VET)
- Public Policy Making
- Policy Implementation
- Markets for Government Services and Products
Dr Don Zoellner has worked in the school, vocational and higher education sectors in the Northern Territory since 1973. He served as the Executive Director of Centralian College in Alice Springs and Pro Vice-Chancellor VET and Community Engagement at Charles Darwin University. He was a director of the Enterprise and Career Education Foundation, Chairperson of the Australian Principals’ Associations Professional Development Council and a panel member of the Shergold Review of Senior Secondary Pathways in 2019-20.
Dr Zoellner has served on numerous advisory committees, reviews and evaluations of education and training at both NT and national levels. He is a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators and former Group Training NT board chair. He currently serves as the independent chair of the Industry Skills Advisory Council Northern Territory board, was the NT representative on the Australian Industry and Skills Committee until the end of 2022, and is a member of the National VET Regulator Advisory Council.
Dr Zoellner completed his Doctor of Philosophy in 2013 by describing the development and implementation of VET policy in Australia and continues to research, present and publish in the area.
Dr Eileen Cummings
University Fellow
: Darwin, NT
Eileen has long-standing connections across NT Aboriginal communities, the Federal and NT Government after her time as a senior bureaucrat in the Aboriginal social policy area. Eileen ensures the research is developed according to the highest standards of research in Western and Aboriginal contexts; Eileen presents and publishes the research outcomes with CDU researchers and supports the engagement of Aboriginal people as researchers in evaluation projects.
Professor Elizabeth Povinelli
University Fellow
: +1 212 854 1467
: New York, USA
Beth's writing has focused on developing a critical theory of late liberalism that would support an anthropology of the otherwise. Informed primarily by the traditions of American pragmatism and continental immanent theory and grounded in the circulation of values, materialities, and socialities. This potential theory has unfolded primarily from within a sustained relationship with Indigenous colleagues in north Australia and across five books, numerous essays, and three films with the Karrabing Film Collective.
Dr George Tan
Profile coming soon
Dr Jan Richardson
: 0414227499
: Casuarina campus, CDU
Jan worked for 15 years as a community worker in remote area Indigenous communities in the Pilbara 1968-1969 (Don McLeod and the 1946 strikers), East Kimberley 1970-1975) (Wyndham), West Kimberley 1975-1980 (Fitzroy Crossing) and NT 1983-1987) (Gurindji at Dagaragu). In Wyndham, I assisted Indigenous women in forming their organisation to care for their children, produce their newspaper, create employment for their youth, feed their school children, and form the first Indigenous basketball team. Stan Davey assisted their people in returning to their country and establishing their community, Oombulgurri. In Fitzroy Crossing, employed part-time by the Department of Community Welfare, which allowed me to introduce a new concept of community women’s networks and part-time employment known as the Homemaker Service. It became a powerful movement of Indigenous Kimberley women to improve their living conditions and protect Women’s Law. Supported women establishing organisations in five communities, creating a newspaper and reading news in the language, developing social support systems, attending courts to advise magistrate on women’s perspectives, developing systems to control dogs and keep them healthy, training women drivers and buying women’s cars. At Daguragu, assisted women in organising to look after older adults and establish laundry systems. Trained bookkeepers to manage their Council finances and run the ANZ bank in the community.
Dr Jocelyn Davies
Jocelyn's appointment to the Northern Institute in 2015 as a University Fellow continues collaboration over the past decade following Jocelyn’s move to Alice Springs in 2004 and her appointment as Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO from 2005 to 2015. Jocelyn was previously based at The University of Adelaide’s Roseworthy Campus (1996 -2002) and then was self-employed in natural resource management planning. Her PhD, completed in 1995, applied action research methods in community-based planning for Aboriginal land management. This laid the foundation for her teaching, research and consultancy services to focus on Indigenous Australians and environmental management, including co-management of protected areas and native title claim resolution. Her earlier career positions as a ranger and protected area planner have ensured her social research is well grounded in physical geography and ecology and is applied.
Professor Kim Humphrey
Previous Director of Northern Institute
: kimberley.humphery@cdu.edu.au
: +61 8 8946 7405
: CDU Casuarina Campus, Darwin NT
Kim has been Director of the Northern Institute at CDU since late 2022 and previously held various senior positions at RMIT University, as a Deputy Dean and Associate Dean of Research & HDR, and Director of the Centre for Applied Social Research.
Kim is an interdisciplinary academic who was initially trained in politics, social theory, HPS, and history but predominantly works in the domain of sociology (and is currently the president of The Australian Sociological Association).
Internationally, Kim is best known for her work on the socio-cultural and political dimensions of consumption and material life. She has also worked extensively on the social and cultural aspects of Indigenous health (in the NT and Victoria) and cross-cultural research ethics. Over the last two decades, Kim has published widely in these fields, has held a number of Australian Research Council grants, and has pursued collaborations through visiting research/professorial positions in sociology and media & creative industries at the University of Manchester, King’s College London, and the University of Sussex.
Kim has a long history of successfully supervising HDR candidates, mentoring early and mid-career colleagues, and working in partnership both across disciplinary boundaries and with government, non-government and community organisations.
Kim’s current research variously focuses on critical and transformative frameworks of ethical/sustainable consumption and enterprise, community-based arts and social enterprise, renewed approaches to social research, and transgender studies (especially transfeminism). She very much welcomes suggestions for research collaboration and inquiries from potential higher degree by research students.
Dr Knut Olawsky
Profile coming soon.
Dr Leonie Norrington
Profile coming soon.
Professor Marie Carla Dany Adone
: +49 (0) 221 470 2829
: Centre for Australian Studies, University of Cologne
Cologne, Germany
- Indigenous Languages and Cultures
- Language Endangerment
- Environmental Justice
- Decolonising Methodologies
- Intercultural (Mis)communication
Dr Dany Adone is Professor and Chair of Applied English Linguistics at the University of Cologne. In Australia, she is also a Visiting Professor at AIATSIS, a Visiting Scholar at the Mirima Dawang Woorlab-gearing Language and Culture Centre in Kununurra, and an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, where she is also a member of the Sydney Indigenous Research Network and Sydney Centre for Language Research. Since 2013, Prof. Adone has been a University Professorial Fellow affiliated with the Northern Institute/CDU.
She has lived in Arnhem Land/NT, Australia, for over five years and has worked in several countries, including Mauritius, Seychelles, Jamaica and the Solomon Islands, on several projects, some of which are concerned with the development of the Indigenous sign languages. Professor Adone is working on three community-driven projects in Australia, two in the Northern Territory and one in Western Australia.
Dr Matthew Campbell
: +61 8 8946 4907
: Darwin, NT
Matt has spent most of his time in the past 20 years working with Aboriginal people on land, research and livelihood issues. He is interested in how people of different cultures find ways to work together productively, something he is pursuing through his PhD research.
Dr Mirriam-Rose Ungunmerr Baumann
Dr Sharon Harwood
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Charles Darwin University; Master of Applied Science, James Cook University; Bachelor of Leisure Studies (hons), Griffith University
- Creating software to help practitioners prepare key demographic inputs.
- Estimation techniques for small populations
- Estimation techniques for small populations
- Estimation techniques for small populations
- Creating software to help practitioners prepare key demographic inputs.
- Creating software to help practitioners prepare key demographic inputs.
With a background in urban/regional and social planning, Sharon is passionate about working with communities to develop place-based solutions to development challenges. She has leveraged her planning knowledge and skills to become an award-winning leader with expertise in corporate governance, land use planning, social infrastructure, policy development, and Board-level and stakeholder engagement across the public, private, Indigenous and NFP sectors.
Professor Sigmund Gronmo
: Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Bergen
Oslo, Norway
- Economic sociology
- Social networks
- Social science methodology
- Research and education for Indigenous Peoples
Professor Grønmo has published numerous books and a large number of journal articles, book chapters and papers, especially within economic sociology, the sociology of time, social network analysis, and social science methodology. He has extensive experience in teaching social research methods at universities and colleges in Norway and several other countries.
He has been a Visiting Professor at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada; Illinois State University, USA; University of California, Berkeley, USA; University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; James Cook University, Cairns, Australia; and University of Cambridge, UK. Professor Grønmo is an elected member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Academiae Europaea, and a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science.
Vale Dr Marthen Luther Ndoen
- Creating software to help practitioners prepare key demographic inputs.
- Estimation techniques for small populations
- Estimation techniques for small populations
- Estimation techniques for small populations
- Creating software to help practitioners prepare key demographic inputs.
- Creating software to help practitioners prepare key demographic inputs.
Marthen was born in Rote island in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. He finished his undergraduate in economics from Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana. He then went to Cornell University in USA to earn his Masters in Southeast Asian studies, and completed his PhD in Regional Economics from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.
Marthen currently served as Director of Development Graduate Studies at Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana. He was also a research fellow at the Center for Institutional Studies and research fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana.