Our team is here to answer your questions and help you learn more about the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab
We use Indigenous Knowledges as a provocateur for seeing, thinking and doing things differently.
How our research addresses critical challenges
Deakin’s Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) Lab is a space where Indigenous practitioners can apply their thinking and systems to different contexts around the world. Established in 2021 by Dr Tyson Yunkaporta, the IKS Lab aims to attract and support a team of Indigenous researchers, Knowledge Keepers and doctoral candidates who weave First People’s thinking, policy and innovations into solutions for some of the most pressing issues of our time.
Our research areas
Our team of researchers apply Indigenous thinking to complex issues across economics, design, leadership, governance, evolutionary dynamics, environment, cognition and consciousness.
Production
Individually and in groups we conduct research projects across many disciplines to inform innovative knowledge and solutions designed to return all human beings to their ecological niche as a custodial species embedded in regenerative landscapes.
Application
In every application of knowledge we seek to build in affordances that increase relationships with humans, non-humans and entities of place, creating feedback loops that continue to generate adaptive responses over time.
Transmission
Land carries networks of informatics that provide relational patterns for optimal knowledge transmission. This informs our pedagogies, communication protocols and governance structures, which we seek to translate into principles, frameworks and media that maximise both the sharing and protection of vital knowledge.
Regeneration
The only secure way to store data over deep time is in intergenerational relationships embedded in meaningful landscapes. We adapt our relational technologies for everyday use in order to keep humans in the loop in the project of long-term knowledge retention.
Drive positive change
A PhD in Deakin’s Faculty of Arts and Education, is an opportunity to make change with the support by world renowned researchers.
By shifting our thinking to be about the knowledge that exists in connected systems, we can solve a lot of the problems and issues we face on a global scale.
Senior Research Fellow and Founder of IKS Labs
Our researchers
Our researchers are Indigenous practitioners and academics who bring a range of interdisciplinary expertise to spark new conversations.
Dr Tyson Yunkaporta is the founder of IKS Labs and senior research fellow as well as an author, academic, educator, Indigenous thinker, maker (traditional wood carving), arts critic, researcher and poet. Tyson belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. His research looks at global systems from an Indigenous perspective, asking how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation.
Dr John Davis is a senior research fellow and a proud Murri Ambae man. He is a Traditional Owner of the western sides of Bunya Bunya Mountains (Boobagarrn Ngumminge). John’s research interests include Indigenous languages as LOTE, embedding Indigenous Knowledges and Indigenous ways to multimodal literacy. John is Dean (First Nations Education and Research) at University of Southern Queensland.
Joshua Waters is a senior research fellow and a proud Gamilaroi man currently studying his PhD exploring First Nations spiritual protection, wellbeing and harm. His past research examines the key convergences between IKS and natural systems combined with Western scientific domains.
Jack Manning Bancroft is an honorary fellow and the CEO and founder of AIME, an award-winning social movement that uses mentoring and imagination to unlock the potential of marginalised youth to create a fairer world.
Dr Rhonda Coopes is an honorary fellow and a proud palawa woman: a descendant of the trawlwoolway Aboriginal people of North Eastern Tasmania. After many years teaching in secondary schools in Tasmania and Queensland she completed a Doctor of Education degree focusing on First Nations peoples marginalisation in decision making and education. Other research interests have included the recognition of First Nations contact languages in English Second Language teaching and planning.
Belinda Wilson is a proud Bundjalung and South Sea Islander woman and Community Research Officer with a strong background in community engagement, culturally informed research, and program support. She is passionate about creating inclusive, culturally safe spaces and developing accessible resources that empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Belinda brings experience across research, education, and community development, with a focus on collaboration, advocacy, and meaningful community-led outcomes
Featured projects
By making research and research translation public and transparent through very regular and open communication of activities and yarns, the IKS Lab seeks to be an open source agent for change for our world.
Complexity yarns with Indigenous Thinkers series
IKS Labs partnered with Cynefin Centre, Cynefin Centre Australia and Complexability, to present a series of wide ranging and emergent yarns held with Indigenous Thinkers from Australia, Wales, Papua New Guinea, Canada and New Zealand. The yarns explored concepts of language, culture, spirituality, scale, similarities, differences and more.
Our publications
Take an in-depth look at our latest research, available in a variety of formats and publications. For a full list of publications visit the profile pages of our researchers.
Latest publications:
- Snake Talk, Tyson Yunkaporta and Megan Kelleher
- Strength Basing, Empowering and Regenerating Indigenous Knowledge Education, John Davis
- Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking, Tyson Yunkaporta
- Hoodie Economics: Changing Our Systems to Value What Matters, Jack Manning Bancroft
