Leah Lui-Chivizhe

Leah Lui-Chivizhe studied history at the University of Sydney, obtaining her PhD in 2017.  Her publication based on her doctoral research Masked Histories: Turtle Shell Masks and Torres Strait Islander People (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2022) was highly commended by the NSW Premier's Australian History Prize 2023. After a postdoctoral fellowship in history in Sydney, she was appointed to the position of Senior Lecturer in Indigenous Histories at the University of Technology, Sydney in January 2022. Leah has taught Indigenous studies since 2001 and prior to this, she worked for NGOs and government departments on a variety of projects for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across eastern Australia. Her current research is on Torres Strait Islander histories of human and more-than-human worlds with a particular focus on how nineteenth-century museum collections can be used to recover Islander cultural and ecological knowledges. During her time at the MPIWG, Leah will be working with Dr. Lisa Onaga in the Reclaiming Turtles all the Way Down: Animal Cosmologies and Paths to Indigenous Sciences Working Group, Dept. III.