Academy Fellow

Professor Emma Lee OAM is a trawlwulwuy woman from tebrakunna country, north-east Tasmania. Starting her professional life as an archaeologist in 1997, her sphere of research interests has grown to include geography, regional development, democracy, tourism, renewables, fisheries and protected and conserved areas — what she sums up as ‘caring for country everywhere’.

Emma combines political advocacy with Indigenous methodologies to elevate Indigenous knowledge systems, ensuring they are recognised, embedded and normalised within mainstream institutions and organisations. 

Drawing on kinship and reciprocity, she seeks opportunities in the unexpected. Her doctoral research and advocacy for the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area led to the Tasmanian government introducing in 2016 a joint management conservation framework and state constitutional recognition of Tasmanian Aboriginal people.   

Her country-based approach to Tasmanian Aboriginal equity in land management planning has influenced global instruments too. In 2021, Emma was the first Indigenous Australian to edit a Best Practice Guideline for conserved and protected areas for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and has co-authored papers to clarify the international definition and framework for Other Effective Area Based Conservation Measures (OECM) under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. These impacts have elevated equity in conservation for millions of Indigenous Peoples globally. 

Emma has been a lifelong advocate of co-design, especially bringing multiple and diverse Indigenous communities together to improve access to Indigenous decision-making over land and seas.

Over the past decade, she has led a research-driven return to sea country and brought together six Tasmanian Aboriginal communities to establish Tasmanian Aboriginal Seafoods, a globally unique registered charity that holds and implements a commercial abalone quota.

Emma’s sea country standing was recognised when she was called upon as the first Indigenous Australian to chair an ASEAN meeting on Maritime Conservation and oversee the elevation of Indigenous matters from Track 1.5 to Track 1.0 (Heads of State) dialogue for the 50^th anniversary in 2024.

Her commitment to co-design with non-Indigenous societies has had global impact. As the first Indigenous Australian recipient of a prestigious Pew Charitable Trust Fellowship in 2023, she co-designed an Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property contract framework to set a benchmark for global philanthropic best practice in Australia. Emma has a distinguished record of membership on government advisory bodies, furthering co-design benefits, and producing reports including models for Indigenous Voice to Government and Parliament (2021).

Although she has a soft spot for her first paper in Antipode, her scholarly work has achieved broad reach, including Indigenous Women’s Voices: 20 years on since Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies, published through Bloomsbury Open Access in 2021, with more than 8,000 downloads. Emma’s work has itself become the subject of academic research, while her publication name, ‘tebrakunna country and Emma Lee’, has confounded archival metadata conventions for close to a decade.

In championing co-design, Emma’s inclusion of Indigenous methodologies across dominant knowledge publications, from Nature Human Behaviour to Biological Reviews, with Tourism Geographies in between, has raised awareness and positive action towards Indigenous equity across research fields, within the publishing industry and around the globe. 

2025: First Nations Drought Advisory Group, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry

2024-25: Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Dialogues, UNEP, Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-7)

2024: National Fisheries Advisory Council, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry

2024: First Nations Advisory Panel member, ARENA (Australian Renewable Energy Agency)

2023-24: National Sustainable Oceans Plan, Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water

2020-21: National Co-Design Group, Indigenous Voice to Government and Parliament, National Indigenous Australians Agency

Awards:

2025:   Order of Australia Medal (OAM).

2021:   Finalist, Australian of the Year (Tasmania).

2020:   William Jonas Award (inaugural), Australian Institute of Geographers.

2019:   Research Impact Award, Faculty Business and Law, Swinburne University of Technology.

2019:   Early Career Researcher – Best Paper Prize, The Australian Sociological Association. 2018: Foundation Graduate Award, University of Tasmania.  

Fellowships:

2023:   Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation, Pew Charitable Trust, USA.

2019:   Japan Society for Promotion of Science Fellowship, Tokyo, Japan (COVID cancelled).

2016:   Indigenous Fellowship, Endeavour Award, Australian Government, Urdaibai, Spain.

1998:   WEH Stanner Fellowship, Australian National University

1.      tebrakunna country and Lee, E 2019, ‘‘Reset the relationship’: decolonising government to increase Indigenous benefit’, Cultural Geographies, 26(4). 

https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474019842891

2. Bellato, B, Frantzeskaki, N, tebrakunna country and Lee, E, Cheer, JM & Peters, A 2023, ‘Transformative epistemologies for regenerative tourism: towards a decolonial paradigm in science and practice?’, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, DOI: 10.1080/09669582.2023.2208310

3. tebrakunna country and Lee, E & Reichelt, R 2025, ‘Biodiversity issue: Indigenous Australian engagement in the National Sustainable Ocean Plan’, Australian Environment Review. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.T2025033100000501850489444

4. Indigenous Knowledges & Local Knowledges Dialogues 2025, Global Environment Outlook 7. Mexico City, Coplt-arXives. https://copitarxives.fisica.unam.mx/SC0011EN/SC0011EN.pdf

5. Alden Hull, R, Fudge, M, Horner, C, Barmuta, L, Jones, M, Pinkard, E, tebrakunna country and Lee, E, & Leith, P 2027, ‘Can nature capital accounting bring accountability for nature?’, Ecological Economics, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2026.109258