Professor Sandra Wooltorton is a Senior Research Fellow with the Nulungu Research Institute, located at the Broome Campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia. She acknowledges Yawuru Country, and Yawuru and Jugun people of the Yawuru nation. Sandra also wishes to honour Wardandi Noongar Country and Elders in the southwest of Australia where she sometimes lives; and traditional custodians and knowledge holders everywhere on the planet.
Sandra is an environmental humanities specialist and trans-disciplinary researcher with a background in cultural geography and education, and a deep interest in applying place-based philosophy to generate solutions to problems of society and environment. She convenes a number of research projects including the ARC Linkage: Intergenerational Cultural Transfer of Indigenous Knowledges. In 2022, she co-led and co-participated in Voicing Rivers, a writing project which produced a series of publications for a Special Issue called: Voicing Rivers of the Journal – “River Research and Applications”. In 2023, Sandra convened a Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education called, Indigenous Philosophy in Environmental Education: Relearning How to Love, Feel, Hear and Live with Place.
Sandra works on projects associated with the creation of prefigurative cultures, for co-constructing the world we want to live in; or living the change we want to see. Her focus is in answering research questions such as these: We not me – how does leadership support the interests of Indigenous and multi-species justice? How do people learn into a culture of flourishing within bioregions? In the Kimberley, the answers are all around us – in Indigenous cultural ways of being and knowing, in landscapes and in knowledge holders. As West Australians, how do people find pathways to recognise the value and preciousness of Rivers, Country and Indigenous tradition? Also see: https://www.notredame.edu.au/research/institutes-and-initiatives/nulungu/people/sandra-wooltorton.