Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence

Our Vision

Healthy Land and Sea Country, centred in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander understandings and approaches and informed by cutting-edge approaches to cultural, environmental, and historical research.

Our Mission

The Centre will set new standards for research and management on Country across Australia. It will be reciprocal, not extractive, and will have the wellbeing of Country and community at its heart. It will recruit, empower, and inspire the next generation of Indigenous researchers as well as training non-Indigenous researchers to collaborate in culturally appropriate ways.

Driven by respectful, authentic co-design, and drawing from diverse cultural, environmental, and historical records, the Centre will work to enhance Land and Sea Country management, reframed by Indigenous knowledges and science.

About CIEHF

Funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), CIEHF was created to pursue better outcomes for Land and Sea Country by bringing Indigenous and Western knowledges together to understand the long-term histories and near-term futures of Australia. Our Centre is a collaboration between 29 organisations, bringing together Australia’s leading researchers and research organisations across diverse fields.

The Centre’s research program brings together cutting-edge techniques from Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous science, archaeology, history, ecology, palaeoecology, palaeoclimatology, mathematics, high-performance computing, remote sensing, and genomics. This pursuit is underpinned by an unwavering commitment to respectful, authentic co-designed research with Indigenous partners.

Our outcomes will support healthy Land and Sea Country management planning now and into the future, centred in Aboriginal- and Torres Strait Islander-led approaches.

But the Centre’s planned research outcomes are only half the story.

CIEHF has an ambitious plan to foster a new generation of Indigenous and non-Indigenous research leaders, equipped with rigorous training and experience in authentic co-designed research frameworks, culturally appropriate transdisciplinary research methods, and who aspire to achieve better outcomes for Country and communities. A significant aim of the Centre is to support the growth of Indigenous research capacity through training and mentoring programs, including creation of a deep pipeline for Indigenous students into research extending from primary school.