Mandy Downing

BIOGRAPHY

Mandy Downing is a Yindjibarndi woman who descends from the Lockyer family of the Pilbara region. Mandy is a Senior Research Services Officer at Curtin University. Further, she has been the University Research ethicist and executive officer to the Curtin University Human Research Ethics Committee. Mandy’s initial research interest was institutional barriers to Aboriginal researchers which emerged from her Honours project. As a PhD student at the University of Melbourne, Mandy’s research is in the decolonisation of research policy and institutional racism.

Mandy is a graduate of the Yorga Djenna Bidi Program through the Western Australian Aboriginal Leadership Institute. She has graduated from the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at Curtin University with a Bachelor of Applied Science Indigenous Australian Research (Honours) Degree and from the University of Melbourne Graduate School of Education with a Professional Certificate in Indigenous Research Leadership.

Mandy has over 20 years of experience in the employment and education sector and is a Committee Member for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Research Ethics Committee, the University of Western Australia’s Human Research Ethics Committee and the Western Australian Department of Education’s Animal Ethics Committee.

Additionally, Mandy is the Australian Lead for the First Nations Research Special Interest Group with the Australasian Research Management Society and a consultant with Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services.

In 2016 Mandy was awarded the best submission in the stream of impacts at the Australasian Ethics Network Conference and in 2019 and has presented further research findings at the Social Impact Festival and the Australasian Research Management Society Conference. Mandy’s research has wide application and engagement across disciplines such as community practice psychology, social science, policy and other areas which require the application of an Indigenous lens.

Further, Mandy is a twice recipient of the Curtin University Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence Award in the categories of Leadership and Reconciliation. Mandy is passionate about changing the narrative for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through the destruction of oppressive systems and structures.

The ethical design and conduct of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research

· Experienced member of HREC’s and an AEC

· Experienced executive officer of HREC’s, AEC and Scientific Advisory Committees

· Institutional and research governance

· Research policy development

· Decolonisation of policy

· Indigenous Australian research methodologies

· Indigenous engagement

Downing, M. (2016). Institutional barriers that Aboriginal researchers face when conducting human research and why it needs to change. 48. Paper presented at Australasian Ethics Network Conference 2016, Adelaide, Australia.

Downing, M. (2019). Decolonising the unethical in research ethics: the unconscious conformity to cultural deficit discourse. Paper presented at Social Impact Festival, Danjoo Koorliny Walking Together Towards 2029 and Beyond, Perth, Australia.

Downing, M., & Dzidic, P. L. (2019). An insight into the decolonisation of research ethics. 40. Paper presented at Australasian Research Management Society Conference, Adelaide, Australia.

Downing, M. (2019). Institutional barriers that Aboriginal researchers face when conducting human research and why it needs to change (2019). 47. Paper presented at Australasian Research Management Society Conference, Adelaide, Australia.

Downing, M., & Dzidic, P. L. (2020). Aboriginal woman and white woman talking: Performing epistemic disobedience in research ethics. Paper presented at International Conference of Community Psychology , Melbourne, Australia.