Professor Mick Dodson is Australian of the Year for 2009 and Director of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies in the College of Law at the Australian National University. Born in Katherine in the Northern Territory, Professor Dodson is from the Yawuru people of the area centred on Broome and he was educated at Katherine, Darwin and in Victoria, where he completed studies in law at Monash University. He served as the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner from 1993 to 1998 and his international roles have included Chair of the United Nations Advisory Group for the Voluntary Fund for the Decade of Indigenous People and member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 2005-2010. He has received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Technology, Sydney and an Honorary Doctorate in Law from the University of NSW.

Professor Christopher Wallace-Crabbe is one of Australia’s most eminent poets and literary critics. Born in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond in 1934 he has published over 20 collections of poetry and his Selected Poems 1956-1994 won The Age Book of the Year Award in 1995 and the D.J. O’Hearn Prize for Poetry.  His most recent collection—Telling a Hawk for a Handsaw (2008)—has received critical acclaim. He was associate editor (with Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss) of The Oxford Literary History of Australia (1998) and editor (with Kerry Flatley) of an anthology for Amnesty International titled From the Republic of Conscience.  He is Emeritus Professor in the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne and has previously worked at Yale University and as Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University. As well as collections of poetry and works of literary criticism he has produced a novel (Splinters 1981) and a series of books with the artist Bruno Leti. He has a strong interest in the legacy of Judith Wright.