Jennifer Biddle

Biography

Jennifer L. Biddle is Professor, UNSW Art & Design. In 2023-2024, she held the Gough Whitlam and Malcom Fraser Chair in Australian Studies at Harvard University. An anthropologist with a background in linguistics, she has worked with northern Warlpiri in Lajamanu, NT, for three decades, and more recently, in partnership with (select) Central and Western Desert community art and media organisations, and in transnational collaboration.

Biddle joined UNSW in 2007 as a Vice Chancellor’s Strategic Research Appointment. She is founding Director of emLAB (the Ethnographic Media Lab) in the Big Anxiety Research Centre (BARC, UNSW); one of only a few programs in Australia to support ethnographic and practice-led research as a basis for creative and critical research innovation in the arts. Former Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow, she has served on the ARC’s College of Experts (2019-2021) and currently, on the ARC MRAG (Medical Research Advisory Group). Since 2022, she is elected Member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). In 2021-2023, she was Associate Dean Engagement and Impact, supporting the development of the new Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture (ADA, UNSW).