Michael Williams (Australia)

Michael Williams (MPhil [Qual.] Griffith) "is a member of the Gooreng Gooreng Aboriginal community from the country between Gladstone and Bundaberg in southeast Queensland. He has been involved in the broad area of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs for over 30 years having been on various boards and committees in community organisations and government bodies. More recently, and for the greater part of his career, he has worked in the tertiary education sector (the past 20 years), lecturing in mainstream history and, more particularly, involved with programs that provide support for Indigenous Australian students. He is formally trained in anthropology and history and his special academic interests include Indigenous language use, cross-cultural communication and methods that ensure that Indigenous intellectual traditions and ways of managing knowledge are understood on Indigenous terms and respected equally alongside other intellectual traditions. In this regard, more recently, he has been articulating these interests within the emerging field of Indigenous Knowledge. He has served on the Council and Research Committees of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Studies in Canberra for most of the last 20 years where he has developed a broad understanding of research from many different academic disciplinary perspectives. His career in teaching and research at tertiary institutions has included serving on academic boards, faculty boards, equity committees and other working parties concerned with Indigenous and non-Indigenous student interests. Michael's career has taken him into interests beyond Indigenous affairs. He has served on the Board of the Special Broadcasting Services (SBS), a national television and radio broadcaster, specifically devoted to broadcasting material of particular interest to ethnic communities represented in Australia."