Researcher spotlight: Dr Samara Hand

Dr Samara Hand is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Law & Justice and a co-founder of the National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition, a youth-led organisation in Australia dedicated to backing the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people to reclaim their rights in education.

Samara (she/her) is Worimi/Biripi, born on Awabakal Country (Newcastle). She began her journey in the Faculty of Law & Justice back in 2008, completing the Winter School program, and then Pre-Law in 2009, before officially starting her legal studies in 2010. Samara recently completed her PhD on the challenges of realising Indigenous peoples’ right to education within the context of histories of assimilative schooling, where she spent two years in Winnipeg (Canada) conducting comparative research. 

What project are you working on that excites you?

Most of my work sits at the intersection of education and questions of (in)justice, as I am interested in how law and policy can both entrench harm and open space for more just futures, especially for First Nations people. Right now, I am especially excited about a think piece I am writing on the legislative pathways to education sovereignty for First Nations. Drawing on my broader comparative work on Indigenous education in Australia and Canada, it feels energising to focus on tangible pathways for communities to take greater control over schooling and to insist that education be in the service of First Nations’ aspirations. At its heart, the project is about families and communities having more choice and authority over how their children are taught, and about using law as one of the tools to get us closer to that vision.

 What do you hope to achieve with your research/impact & engagement in the next year? 

Over the next year, I want my work to give First Nations communities and organisations something concrete they can take into conversations with governments and education systems. The mapping I am doing of legislative pathways to education sovereignty is designed to support communities to say, “Here are the specific levers we can pull, and here is what reform could actually look like in practice.” More broadly, I hope my research helps shift debates about First Nations education away from deficit narratives and towards questions of self-determination, jurisdiction and governance, and that it can feed into reform agendas in a way that is genuinely useful.

 What research/impact & engagement achievement are you most proud of and why? 

I am most proud of a project I led for the National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition, where we documented the laws and policies that enabled, and in some cases actively encouraged, the exclusion of First Nations children from government schools across Australia. It was a difficult history to sit with, but as a piece of truth-telling it really mattered, because it helped explain why so many Indigenous families still carry deep distrust and hurt when it comes to schools today. What has stayed with me most are the responses from Indigenous students, parents and teachers who told us the work helped validate their experiences and gave them a resource to educate colleagues, schools and policymakers about why disengagement is not an individual failing but rather linked to a long legal and policy history. 

Do you have a regular research practice that you can share?

One practice I come back to often is taking time to intentionally zoom out and imagine the kind of future I want for the next generation, and for the next seven generations. I use that as a kind of alignment check and ask myself: is this project, this collaboration, this deadline moving us even a small step towards that bigger vision of justice and self-determination, or is it pulling energy away from it? When things get busy, returning to that practice helps me prioritise, say no to work that does not fit, and stay grounded in why I am doing this research in the first place. Sometimes I will do this practice in conversation with family, colleagues, and community members to ensure that I’m staying accountable to the people and communities I hope the work will serve.