CDU professor nominated for senior of the year

Charles Darwin University (CDU) associate professor Elaine Ḻäwurrpa Maypilama has been nominated for the 2024 Northern Territory Senior Australian of the Year award for her work in child and newborn health.

Ḻäwurrpa is a Warramiri woman from Yolŋu Country and senior research fellow at the Molly Wardaguga Research Centre, an institute that leads First Nations maternal, newborn and child health research.

Her work focuses on redesigning maternity services so that very remote First Nations communities are culturally responsive. The research centre’s co-director, Professor Yvette Roe, said this has been imperative to improving the health and wellbeing of Indigenous women and babies.

"Ḻäwurrpa is a gifted educator and has been a pioneer in advocating and ensuring that Yolŋu and Western epistemology is philosophically valued as a combined approach to understanding, exploring, and improving the world," Professor Roe said.

"She has been instrumental in this bicultural approach being used in diverse disciplines such as education, health and wellbeing, First Nations research and ecological knowledge translation."

Ḻäwurrpa is also a principal research fellow at the Northern Institute and a co-founder of Yalu' Marŋgithinyaraw, a community-based charity that nurtures Yolŋu culture, ensuring its traditions are passed on to future generations.

The Territory’s awards recipients will be announced on November 6, 2023, in a ceremony at the Darwin Convention Centre. Four Territory recipients will go on to join recipients from other states and territories as finalists in the national Australian of the Year Awards to be presented in Canberra on January 25, 2024.

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