Chris Anderson

Dr Anderson is a leading international communities & social performance practitioner, working with the extractive sector as well as with development agencies and Indigenous and other communities. He worked directly for Australian Indigenous communities for 22 years undertaking land claim and other research. Over the past 20 years, Dr Anderson has worked for major mining companies focusing on social impacts and land and community issues including stakeholder engagement and agreement-making in more than 14 countries. He now owns Yirri Global, LLC, a consultancy based in Denver, Colorado. Anderson is an active academic, teacher and writer. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia and is an Adjunct Professor at that university’s Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining. Other past roles include Director of the South Australian Museum, Chair of the International Council on Mining & Metals Working Group on Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights and board member of the Open Contracting Partnership. Dr Anderson has won several awards for his work, including a UN Human Rights award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Race Relations, UCLA Pacific Rim Foreign Scholar Award, and Alumnus of the Year at the University of Queensland in 2013.
Supervisors: John von Sturmer and Bruce Rigsby