Sam Williams

Sam is a PhD candidate and research associate at the Northern Institute with a background in anthropology. Prior to commencing his PhD, Sam worked for four years as an anthropologist at the Northern Land Council.

Sam is engaged in a collaborative research project with senior Indigenous elders living in Maningrida that aims to reinvigorate relationships to a host of significant named places on the coast of north central Arnhem Land. As commissioned by these elders, Sam is supporting the creation of an archive of video materials recorded at and with these places. Sam’s research asks how affective relationships to ancestral land and sea are expressed and experienced in Maningrida, and explores the various forces and institutions mediating contemporary people-place relationships.

Research interests:

• Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous institutions
• Homelands policy and the spatial arrangements of remote living
• Affective dimensions of relationship to Country
• Archiving and repatriation
• The history and legacy of anthropology in northern Australia
• Ethnography, STS, political ecology
• Property relations, land tenure, land rights