John von Sturmer is a social anthropologist with a long and distinguished career in Aboriginal studies. He has been a central participant in many key events and issues including uranium mining in Western Arnhem Land, the Aboriginal Customary Law Reference, the Wik Native Title Claim, and was Research Director and Senior Adviser to the Agreement Implementation Committee and First Nations Joint Company, PNG–Gladstone Pipeline Project (1998–2002). Von Sturmer has held numerous teaching and research positions in Australia at the universities of New South Wales, New England, Charles Darwin, Queensland, and at the Australian Institute for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). He was an early proponent of structuralist theory in the Australian academic scene, having translated Claude Lévi-Strauss’ The Elementary Structures of Kinship for Beacon Press, Boston (1969), and has published widely in the areas of Aboriginal studies, structuralist theory and art criticism. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Postcolonial Studies, University of Melbourne, and a Member of AIATSIS. John has a long involvement in Aboriginal art and performance, and since the mid-1990s he has had an increasing creative involvement in painting, installation and performance, including collaborations with Slawek Janicki, Cigdem Aydemir, Djon Mundine and Roy Mundine among others. He has been based in Sydney since 1984. Since 1994 von Sturmer has been a freelance writer, critic, research consultant and artist.