'Lilla Watson is rightly regarded as one of Queensland’s finest visual artists. Her ‘burnings’ on paper depict with insight and beauty our lives and landscape. In this short piece, I pay tribute to another of her great contributions – as a university researcher, tutor and lecturer in Aboriginal social welfare. It is timely to do so as the Fryer Library has acquired a collection of her papers (UQFL576) from this phase of her remarkable career.' (Introduction)