Siobhan McDonnell

Siobhan McDonnell is an Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, specializing in legal anthropology with a focus on Indigenous communities in Australia and the Pacific. Her work addresses land reform, gender and natural resource management, climate change, disaster management, legal pluralism, and customary institutions.

• Research Interests
  • Indigenous land rights and resource management
  • Gender dynamics in environmental governance
  • Customary law and legal pluralism
  • Climate change policy in the Pacific
  • Disaster resilience and vulnerability frameworks
• Key Projects
  • Gender and climate change in Oceania
  • Disaster ethnographies focusing on 'vulnerability' and 'resilience'
  • Indigenous, refugee, and migrant family law adaptation

Scientific Awards:

• Australian Anthropology prize for best thesis in Anthropology (2017)
• Gender Institute prize for advancing gender studies (2017)

Siobhan supervises PhD and Honours students on topics like Indigenous urban wellbeing, land access in Timor-Leste, and decolonizing property systems. She contributes to multidisciplinary research groups at ANU, including Indigenous peoples, cultures and knowledges, Climate economics and policy, and Risk, vulnerability and resilience initiatives.