Postdoctoral Fellow

**Classification**: ANU Academic Level B
**Salary package**:$107,475 - $121,857 per annum plus 17% superannuation
**Terms**: Full-time, Fixed term (2 years)
- Be a part of Australia’s #1 university
- Work in a beautiful campus environment on Canberra’s doorstep
- Enjoy generous benefits including 17% superannuation.

**About Us**

The School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) is a world-class academic centre renowned for its pioneering research and education on regulation and governance. For the past 20 years, RegNet has carried out transformative research that develops innovative ways of responding to the complex and interconnected challenges of the 21st century. Our work is distinctly interdisciplinary and focuses on improving the governance of major social, economic, environmental and health issues.

The Postdoctoral Fellow will report to ANU Indigenous academic, Dr Virginia Marshall, and work with a multidisciplinary team including an ANU-based Research Officer and PhD scholar and the ARC research team that includes Prof Emma Kowal and her Postdoctoral Fellow (Medical Anthropology) based at Deakin University, Prof Ron Quinn and his PhD scholars (compositional analysis) based at Griffith University, two Kimberley-based senior Nyikina Elders engaged on the project as (male and female) Indigenous Research Collaborators, members of the Indigenous Advisory Panel, as well as the consultants (Regulatory Systems and Videography) engaged on the project. The Postdoctoral Fellow will be supported to develop and maintain effective and trusted relationships with the relevant Aboriginal representative organisations, government agencies, and non-government organisations to contribute to the collaborative research focus of the ARC (Aboriginal medicines) project.

The other members of the ARC (Aboriginal medicines) research team will focus on the four other research components - the medical anthropology of traditional medicines, the regulation of traditional medicines, compositional analysis of the case study medicine, and the past commercialisation efforts by the traditional owners and their collaborators, including the barriers and enabling factors. Each of these research components are innovative in their own right, developing new methods and frameworks that will contribute to pioneering regulatory pathways for commercial development of Indigenous traditional medicine products. Taken together, this project will enable the world-first development of an Indigenous-led, multidisciplinary collaborative methodology for the commercial development of TK products by Indigenous communities and contribute to the redesign of Australia’s regulatory pathways to better recognise the TK in traditional medicines. In addition to other outputs the project will produce a toolkit of resources for Indigenous communities considering commercialising products based in their bio-cultural TK.

**About the role**

We are recruiting a Postdoctoral Fellow who is passionate about advancing the recognition of Indigenous bio-cultural resources within current Australian IP and regulatory frameworks, drawing on a case study of one of the earliest Aboriginal medicine projects to have commenced on a path towards commercial development. Grounded in strong Indigenous governance, this project will produce outputs that will have wide significance for the recognition and commercial development of Indigenous bio-cultural resources, nationally and internationally.

This postdoctoral position is part of an ARC-funded research project 'Investigating barriers and pathways to commercial development of Indigenous traditional medicines' which is a collaboration between ANU, Deakin and Griffith universities. The project brings together leading experts in law, Indigenous governance, medical anthropology, chemistry, and pharmaceutical regulation, Indigenous Research Collaborators, a complimentary medicine consultant and a team of experienced filmmakers to investigate and document the key barriers impeding the translation of Traditional Knowledge (TK) of traditional medicinal plants into commercial opportunities.

The ANU Postdoctoral Fellow (Indigenous governance) will focus on the Indigenous governance and IP component to conduct research into the capacity of Indigenous governance systems to manage the interface between the expectations of traditional knowledge holders and the expectations of research partners, Indigenous representative bodies, philanthropists and prospective commercial partners with respect to economic development opportunities.

This will include investigating:

- Indigenous perspectives on governance arrangements in relation to commercial development of Traditional Knowledge (TK) in genetic resources,
- the potential benefits and risks of commercialising TK under the current IP regime, and the perspectives of traditional knowledge holders on how IP protections could be developed to adequately protect TK and to address Australia’s