Dr Emma Lee

Biography

Dr Emma Lee is a trawlwulwuy woman of tebrakunna country, north-east Tasmania, Australia.  She is an Associate Professor (Indigenous Leadership) and co-established the RegionxLink program office in Burnie, Tasmania, for the Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology.  Her research fields over the last 25 years have focused on Indigenous affairs, land and sea management, policy and governance of Australian regulatory environments. Dr Lee’s work in Tasmania has assisted in constitutional reform, the first joint management plan of a protected area and establishing a market for cultural fisheries.

In 2021, she became the first Indigenous Australian editor of a Best Practice Guideline for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In 2021, Emma was a finalist for Australian of the Year - Tasmania. In 2018 she became the first Aboriginal Tasmanian recipient of the University of Tasmania’s Foundation Graduate Award and in 2020 the inaugural recipient of the William Jonas Award, Institute of Australian Geographers.  In 2019, she was awarded The Australian Sociological Association’s Most Distinguished Paper Award for an ECR.  Dr Lee has previously won prestigious fellowships to study in Europe and Asia.  In 2020 she was appointed by the Federal Government to the National Co-Design Group, Indigenous Voice.