About Amanda Kearney
Amanda is a Professor of Post-Conventional Anthropology with over 25 years of training in high-stakes, culturally diverse working environments, ranging from remote Indigenous communities in Australia to African descendant communities in Brazil, diaspora groups in Japan, and among migrant families in New South Wales and Victoria.
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Based in the USA and Australia, Amanda is an international leader in the field of reflexivity, self and organisational awareness building and fostering intercultural trust.
Amanda has led the design of ethical work and industry cultures since 2010. She has been Chair of the Human Research Ethics Committee for the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Flinders University and the Edmund Rice Centre. She has provided expert consulting on the drafting and revising of national and local codes of ethics for research with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, The Scarlet Alliance, and consulting firms across Australia.
Her speciality skillset is guiding and mentoring individuals and organisations on how to work better across cultures and invest in and embrace diversity, plural knowledges and intercultural ethics.
Amanda's professional training and experience have taught her that we all need help getting along better at work, in life, and with our environment. Many want to be 'better in relation' but need guidance and skills. After decades of unique and highly valuable cross-cultural training and practice, Amanda provides training and skills development in intercultural awareness and sensitivity, and teachings on cultural differences and plural knowledges and will help you to find your footing in a time of increasing complexity. .
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A Philosophy for Keeping Company
Keeping company is a philosophy of being better in relation with others. It is adopted as shorthand for a highly sophisticated relational habit that incorporates people from diverse backgrounds, and includes how we relate to the non-human and our environment. Keeping company is a praxis of expansive connectivity.
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Amanda has written and published seven books, and over 55 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters as a sole author and as part of an editorial team with other academics and Indigenous elders. She has presented her works globally. See Amanda's published works here
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Unique Expertise
Amanda is a master of finding your ethical narrative and crafting positive work and collective cultures. Whether you are looking to nurture your organisational culture and understand the needs of personnel from different backgrounds, or if you are seeking to grow knowledge from a different cultural perspective (for example, Indigenous knowledge) to enrich your practice and programs, she has the expertise to develop a 'read' on your organisational culture, and to identify and amplify the unique narrative and ethical potential for an organisation or person. Amanda specialise in advising, and guiding, without judgement, persons and organisations seeking to enrich their intercultural understanding through growing and reforming their appreciation and embrace of difference.
Dr. Amanda Kearney
Dr. Amanda Kearney
Director
Building on decades of experience working across cultures in highly diverse contexts ranging from remote and urban Aboriginal communities, to US military bases in Japan, and African-Brazilian communities in Salvador, Bahia in northern Brazil I have consolidated a profound skillset in the art of engaging difference for positive personal and professional growth. I have mentored government officials, television producers, school teachers, medical practitioners, academics, migrant service personnel, and senior executives in the art of reflecting on and understanding cultural difference and how to harness this for growth and social impact.
Mail: dramandakearney@gmail.com
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My University of Melbourne Professorial Fellow academic profile is available here
Education
2005
Ph.D,
University of Melbourne
Amanda was awarded a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Melbourne in 2005. Her doctoral research involved an immersive, qualitative field-based encounter, in which she collaborated with Indigenous people throughout northern Australia, including Yanyuwa, Marra and Garrwa language groups. She has since built a career around a sustained commitment to globally oriented, socially impacting research, steeped in a decolonial and intercultural commitment to working with plural knowledges and embracing ethical conduct in all academic and societal contexts.
1998
Bachelor of Arts Honours (Anthropology)
University of Queensland
First Class Honours, Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree in Anthropology.
1997
Bachelor of Arts (Anthropology)
University of Queensland
Bachelor of Arts, with a double major in Anthropology.