Academic, lawyer and writer, Larissa Behrendt graduated from Harvard Law School with a doctorate in 1998. Her thesis was later published as the book Achieving Social Justice : Indigenous Rights and Australia's Future (2003). She is admitted to the Supreme Court of NSW and the ACT as a barrister.
Since 2001 Behrendt has been Professor of Law and Director of Research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney and has published extensively on property law, Indigenous rights, dispute resolution and Aboriginal women's issues. Other works include Aboriginal Dispute Resolution (1995).
In 2003 she was awarded, with Marcia Langton, the Neville Bonner Indigenous University Teacher of the Year Award. Behrendt has been a director of Ngiya, National Institute of Indigenous Law, Policy and Practice, a council member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, a Judicial Member of the Administrative Decisions Tribunal, Equal Opportunity Division and the Alternate Chair of the Serious Offenders Review Board. She has also been a Board Member of the Museum of Contemporary Art and a Director of the Sydney Writers' Festival and the Bangarra Dance Theatre.
Behrendt is the daughter of Paul Behrendt. In 2004 she fictionalised the story of her father's search for his Indigenous heritage in her novel Home.
In 2009 she was named NAIDOC person of the year and in March 2011 became the first Chair of Indigenous Research at the University of Technology, Sydney. Since April 2011, Larissa's column Pointed View is a regular in Tracker magazine.
Other Works:
First Australians. Edited with Cathy Hammer, Sydney Legal Information Access Centre, 2013.
Indigenous Australia for Dummies, Wiley, 2012.