Mandy Downing is a Yindjibarndi woman who descends from the Lockyer family of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Mandy is the Dean, Indigenous Futures in the Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University and the Senior Indigenous Facilitator for the National Environmental Science Program’s Sustainable Communities and Waste Research Hub.
Mandy has worked in various roles in research management at Curtin since 2012 and was twice awarded the Curtin University Vice Chancellor’s Excellence Award in 2018 and 2020.
Mandy is the Co-Chair of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) National Research Ethics Committee. Previously, she was a committee member in the researcher category.
Mandy is an applied ethicist and applied scientist in Indigenous Australian research and her research interests traverse across institutional racism and the decolonisation of policy. Mandy is a graduate of the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at Curtin University, Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, and the Western Australian Aboriginal Leadership Institute.
Mandy has worked in the education, employment and training sector for over 20 years and is a committee member for the University of Western Australia Human Research Ethics Committee and the Western Australian Department of Education Schools Animal Ethics Committee. Further, Mandy is a consultant with the Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services, the Australian lead of the Australasian Research Management Society’s First Nations Research Special Interest Group and the Co-Facilitator of the Western Australian Aboriginal Leadership Institute’s Emerging Leadership program.