Time to Listen

Melissa Castan

Melissa Castan is a Professor at the Monash Law Faculty and the Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. Her family were ‘new Australians’, refugees from persecution in Eastern Europe who came to Australia seeking safety and the opportunity to build new lives in what they were told was a ‘new nation’. She is a legal academic working in the realm of human rights, public and constitutional law, with a focus on opportunities for the recognition and implementation of proper legal relations with First Nations people. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and is committed to the advancement of social justice through law reform and legal education in Australia.

Lynette Russell

Lynette Russell AM is an ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Professor at Monash University’s Indigenous Studies Centre. Her Aboriginal ancestors were born on the lands of the Wotjobaluk people, and she is descended from convicts on the other side of her family; she is rather uniquely placed as an historian. All of her work is deeply interdisciplinary and collaborative. She is the author or editor of fifteen volumes, with several more in train, and she is the only Australian scholar to be elected to both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute, both in London. Her passions are community outreach and the dissemination of knowledge, social justice, and the Essendon Football Club.