Therese Apolonio
Email: t.apolonio@unsw.edu.au
Supervisors: Leah Lui-Chivizhe, Daniel Robinson
I am a PhD candidate in the School of Humanities and Languages at UNSW Sydney and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures (CIEHF). My academic background is in history and interdisciplinary environmental research, with a focus on Indigenous governance and land-based institutions. Prior to commencing my PhD, I worked with the Indigenous Land and Justice Research Group at UNSW for 8 years on projects relating to Aboriginal land rights, renewable energy, and environmental governance. I have experience in archival research, oral history, qualitative interviewing, policy analysis, and community-engaged research developed in collaboration with Aboriginal landholders, government agencies, and industry partners. My broader research interests include Indigenous governance, land rights, environmental history, political ecology, and climate governance.
- Research area
- Research outputs
My doctoral research is a place-based historical and ethnographic study of land-based governance in South Central Arnhem Land. The project examines how Indigenous ranger organisations and their historical precedents operate as contemporary forms and lived expressions of Aboriginal authority grounded in land affiliation, kinship systems, collective consent, and traditional law.
Drawing on archival research, oral history interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and policy analysis, my thesis situates Indigenous ranger groups within longer histories of Aboriginal labour, resistance, and engagement with settler-colonial and extractive regimes. A central focus of the research is how Indigenous land management is reshaped under intensifying climate crisis and the growing formalisation of land-based care within contemporary institutional and economic frameworks.