Peta Jeffries

Dr Peta Jeffries

Ethnographic historian

Indigenous Australian Studies

Biography

Peta's teaching and research intersects critical Indigenous studies; environmental studies; visual arts; education; history and eco-social work. With qualifications and research experience in each of these discipline areas, her approaches include arts-based and practice led; community-led; co-design, participatory; and action research. Peta does not identify as Indigenous, however, she does acknowledge her own colonising and colonised family histories. These complex histories guide Peta's ethnographic and arts practice as research, and her teaching, which aims to address systemic and environmental racism by increasing cultural safety, humility and responsiveness. Peta has experience in remote and arid/semi-arid ecological field surveying; Indigenous-led research - for example, "Traditional Ecological Knowledge" (TEK) and capacity or nation rebuilding; oral and social history; ethnography; Indigenous land and water rights; practice led and arts-based approaches; human rights; ethics, and critical pedagogies.

Research
  • Arts-based and practice led research
  • Environmental (eco) social work
  • Ethnographic history
  • Co-production of social and ecological knowledges
  • Critical Indigenous studies
Publications
Full publications list on CRO

Recent publications

  • Cochrane, T., McManus, S., Jeffries, P., Krebs, G. L., Knight, A., Baumgartner, L. J., Radley, A. R., Dacker, R. A., Westaway, K., Walters, M., & Castle, S. (2025). Merging Indigenous and Western Research Methodologies: Reflections on a Journey. Australian Studies Journal Zeitschrift für Australienstudien, 42. https://doi.org/10.35515/zfa/asj.42/2025.07
  • Esperon-Rodriguez, M., Jeffries, P., Bond, J., Esperon Rodriguez, D., & Tjoelker, M. G. (2025). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s perceptions and preferences of urban forests in Australia. Discover Cities.
  • Cochrane, T., Jeffries, P., McManus, S., Baumgartner, L. J., Knight, A., & Strevens, C. (2024). Using Indigenous methodologies to conserve my personal totem the koala. Paper presented at Health and Environmental Science Research Campus Connections 2024, Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia.
  • Duncombe, R., Russ, E., Gersbach, K., Halton, C., Jeffries, P., Whitaker, L., Short, M., & Redshaw, S. (2024). Democratizing online social work education: Addressing othering. In J. Przeperski, & R. Biakady (Eds.), English (pp. 391-412). Routledge.
  • Jeffries, P. (2024). Re-envisioning Australian history with once silenced voices and women’s knowledge. In D. Bridges, C. Lewis, E. Wulff, C. Litchfield, & L. Bamberry (Eds.), Gender, Feminist and Queer Studies: Power, Privilege and Inequality in a Time of Neoliberal Conservatism (1st ed., pp. 9-21). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003316954-3