Rate My Professor Jon Altman

Jon Altman is an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University’s School of Regulation and Global Governance in the College of Asia and the Pacific. He holds a BA and MA (Hons) from the University of Auckland and a PhD in Anthropology from the Australian National University, where he conducted doctoral fieldwork in the Maningrida region of central Arnhem Land during 1979-1981 and has maintained long-term research relations there. Possessing a disciplinary background in economics and anthropology, Altman’s career at ANU included postdoctoral fellow, research fellow, and senior research fellow roles in the Department of Political and Social Change from 1983 to 1990. He was the Foundation Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) from April 1990 to April 2010, remaining a research professor at CAEPR until 2015. From 2016 to 2019, he served as research professor in anthropology at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University in Melbourne, where he continues in an honorary capacity. Altman has also held an adjunct Professorial Fellowship at the Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods at Charles Darwin University since 2001 and a Visiting Research Fellowship with the Native Title Research Unit at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies since 2013.

Altman’s academic interests center on sustainable economic development and policy for Indigenous Australia, including the hybrid economy framework, Indigenous economic engagement with market sectors like mining, tourism, arts, carbon farming, wildlife, and fisheries; customary economy-market articulations; land rights, native title, and Indigenous land and sea management; and theoretical issues in economic and development anthropology. He directed projects such as ‘People on Country, Vital Landscapes, Indigenous Economic Futures’ funded by the Sidney Myer Trust from 2007 and held an ARC Australian Professorial Fellowship from 2008 to 2013 for ‘Hybrid Economic Futures for Remote Indigenous Australia’. Major awards include election as Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2003, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2012, and Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2017 for significant service to tertiary education, research, administration, social sciences, and Indigenous economic policy. Key publications encompass edited volumes People on Country: Vital Landscapes, Indigenous Futures (2012, with Seán Kerins), Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia (2010, with Melinda Hinkson), Power, Culture, Economy: Indigenous Australians and Mining (2009, with David Martin), and Coercive Reconciliation: Stabilise, Normalise, Exit Aboriginal Australia (2007, with Melinda Hinkson), alongside articles such as ‘The hybrid economy and anthropological engagements with policy discourse: A brief reflection’ (2009), ‘Lessons from a basic income programme for Indigenous Australians’ (2017), and ‘Basic Income and Cultural Participation for Remote-Living Indigenous Australians’ (2019). Altman chairs the Research Committee of the Australia Institute, serves as associate commissioning editor of Arena, and directs organizations including the Karrkad-Kanjdji Trust, Institute of Postcolonial Studies, and Original Power.