Active Members
A wiradyuri woman, kate co-founded the Fenner Decolonial Research and Teaching Circle (the Circle) with two PhD colleagues in 2019 to help each other decolonize our research and teaching practices in the Fenner School of Environment & Society. While Decoloyarns was not a specific idea in kate’s grand plans for the circle, it does reflect the broader vision. She had no idea she would need to develop webmistress skills! May Decoloyarns also help you on your decolonization journey.
Brianna is a Wiradjuri woman and PhD student in the Fenner School of Environment and Society. Brianna’s PhD is using an Indigenous-led Two-Way Methodology to investigate the potential impacts of heavy metals from the Australian Gold Rush on Wiradjuri Country. Brianna is also (kinda) an artist and weaver. Brianna is proud to be a co-convenor of the Fenner Circle, and is grateful for the support and inspiration that the Circle provides.
Emma is a wiradyuri woman and is currently completing her Master’s in Hungary, where she specialises in documentary film and storytelling across cultures and borders. Since 2025, she has contributed to the ongoing work of the Circle and its broader decolonial vision, alongside kate. While living off Country, she shares stories of home and community, and is committed to educating others through film, conversation, and cultural exchange.
Melissa is Tati Tati from Murray River Country, completing her PhD in First Nations water governance at Monash University. Her research centres the Murray River as an economic and governance partner through kinship economies and First Nations knowledge systems that water policy has long refused to see. She is accompanied through life and fieldwork by four dogs, a rotating stack of books, and a firm belief that sunshine improves most situations.
Angus is a settler engineer of Irish, British and Mandailing ancestry, and a PhD candidate at the ANU. Angus grew up on Binja-Yuin Country on the far south coast of NSW, whose wonders have spurred a search for engineering alongside County’s First Peoples. He currently resides on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, working with Gunggari-settler owned/operated South Coast Native Seeds on building First Nations seed economies. His research uses participatory design to explore how to better engage in genuinely collaborative, non-extractive engineering.
Sophia is a PhD candidate at the School of Art and Design, where she researches human-soil communion. She is acutely aware that we are all always working on someone’s Country, and joined the Fenner Circle to learn about how to do this with respect and humility. She initially joined Decoloyarns as a copyeditor, and has strong opinions about the correct use of dashes.
Nyssa is a white settler Australian working and living on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country. Her decolonial journey began with a deep generosity from a community of people in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands and now the journey continues with her current work with Bandalang Studio, her art practise and her work with the Fenner Circle. She is loving the insights into broader transdisciplinary decolonial research, in particular for the revelations that come of deconstructing ingrained colonial values.
Rosanna is a settler and creative of predominantly Kernewek, Scottish, and Irish heritage. Her settlerism is intergenerational and interwoven with Wiradyuri, Darug and Gundungurra Country and Peoples. She is currently Editorial Convenor of Decoloyarns, and co-convenor of the Fenner Decolonial Research and Teaching Circle, alongside kate and Bri. Her PhD from the School of Culture, History and Language, focuses on the ethics of representing First Peoples by white settler writers.
Alumni
Ruth is an autistic white settler colonist. Being autistic, Ruth finds speech-based conversations difficult: getting her brain to coordinate the hearing, thinking, feeling and speaking at the speed which other people talk is extremely hard work. Sometimes she can manage it and other times it’s just too much too fast. Ruth got involved in Decoloyarns because she wanted to help find a way to share the deadly work the Fenner Circle is doing with people who, for whatever reason, aren’t able to be part of the monthly yarns. As a founding member and convenor of the Decoloyarns Editorial Circle, Ruth’s contributions are threaded throughout the site and articles that comprise Decoloyarns.
Leila is a PhD candidate at the Fenner School of Environment Society. The Fenner Circle has been integral to her learning about decolonial research and Indigenous ways of knowing. She became involved in Decoloyarns when it was already an exciting project with momentum, and served as a Decoloyarns convener.
Decoloyarns 