Sandy Toussaint

Professor Sandy Toussaint is an anthropologist, author and curator. A UWA academic staff member for 20 years, her research and teaching included applied and legal anthropology, gender and sexuality, and contemporary social thought. She has worked with Australian Indigenous communities, families and organizations for almost four decades, most especially in the Kimberley region, on matters relating to cultural heritage, land, water and native title, family history, community engagement, health and medicine, material culture, exhibitions, and story-telling. Senior Research Officer for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody led in WA by Pat Dodson, the WA Aboriginal Land Inquiry, and Aboriginal Education, Sandy is also a former Oxford Research Fellow, Trustee of the 1930s Kaberry Kimberley Collection at AIATSIS, and a former AIATSIS Councillor.  In 2016, she resigned as a committee member of the RM and CH Berndt Research Foundation. A member of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register for Australia, her books include Ngurntakura Wangki- Amy's Story with Annette Puruta Kogolo and Marminjiya Joy Nuggett (2014),  Kimberley Stories (2012), and Crossing Boundaries in Native Title (2004). She has also authored refereed articles and book chapters, commentary and prose. Driven by practice-led collaborative cross-disciplinary work and cultural ethics, Sandy’s coordinating/curatorial work includes exhibitions such as Martuwarra Jila (Cullity Gallery 2003), Jimmy Pike's Artlines (Berndt Museum 2012, and national tour), Ngurntakura Wangki - Amy's Story (Gallery Central 2013), Warmun Then and Now (2015, Berndt Museum exhibition at the LWG), and Visual Story-Telling: Painting the Future (2017, Notre Dame University, Broome Campus). The Co-Trustee of the Catherine Berndt Estate is a key responsibility Sandy continues to hold. Actively guiding a time of transition, she managed the Berndt Museum at UWA between October 2013 and December 2015. Current research projects with others include development of an exhibition/installation focused on the combined value of material culture, religion and science, documentation of a Kimberley arts project with desert Traditional Owners, and a remote area health project with Kimberley groups. Also affiliated with the University of Notre Dame, Sandy was the 2017 Scholar-In-Residence at the Nulungu Research Institute, Broome, Kimberley, on the Law Society's Old Court House and Law Museum Committee, a member of the Transitions Town Vincent, and the Collaborative Anthropologies Editorial Board.

Trustee of the Phyllis Kaberry Collection at AIATSIS, Co-Trustee of the Catherine Berndt Estate, research grant and publishing review, editorial board of journal Collaborative Anthropologies, PhD supervision, Advisory Committee UNESCO's Memory of the World Register Australasia. Former AIATSIS Councillor (two terms), thirty years research experience.

Community health project focused on cancer support services in remote areas; documentation of arts project for Kimberley Desert Traditional Owners; ethnographies of water; urban human/environment transitions.