Director, Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research, Flinders University
Biography: Dr Lester-Irabinna Rigney is Director of the Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research, Flinders University. He is an Associate Professor of Education and is one of the most influential Indigenous Australian educationalists today.
His leadership in ethical education is evident through his election by his academic peers since 2002, to the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Research Advisory Committee. He is recognised as a national and international authority in the area of Indigenist research methodologies and epistemologies. His research focuses on research ethics, intellectual and cultural property rights. Interest in his work by national and international universities has seen him take up several prestigious Visiting Research Fellowships including Cambridge University, UK; Fort Hare University, South Africa; and University of British Columbia, Canada. He is in constant demand as a commentator on national and international Indigenous matters and has published widely on research methods, ethics, languages and knowledge transmission. His recent 2006 co-edited book titled Sharing Spaces: Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Responses to Story, Country and Rights, is the most up to date Australian text on Indigenous and non-Indigenous race relations and how this converges in the vulnerable, vital and contested space called ethical education. Rigney is also an Adjunct Professor at the Australian National University.
