Darlene Oxenham is a Malgana woman who grew up in Carnarvon, Western Australia and moved to Perth to study in 1982. Her undergraduate degree is in anthroplogy. She began her career employed by the Department of Aboriginal Sites at the Western Australian Museum. Darlene has worked in Indigenous higher education for over seventeen years, focussing on research and postgraduate studies. She began working as the Coordinator of the undergraduate degrees and associate degree in the Aboriginal Community Management and Development Program at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies (CAS), Curtin University.
Darlene has been involved in several research projects including a collaborative research project with the Umulliko Indigenous Higher Education Research Centre, University of Newcastle on Indigenous Research Methodologies; and a national research project reviewing Aboriginal and Health Worker Training. In 2002 she held the position of Director of the Curtin Indigenous Research Centre and in the same year she also became the Coordinator of the Honours and Postgraduate programmes at the CAS.
Darlene joined the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Western Australia as Associate Dean in 2006. She is also an accomplished author of many research papers and texts which include Aboriginal Terms of Reference : The Concept at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies (1999) and A Dialogue on Indigenous Identity : Warts 'n' All (1999).
