Diane Bell

Diane Robin (Di) Bell (born 11 June 1943) is a pioneering Australian feminist anthropologist, author and activist. She has a particular focus on the Aboriginal people of Australia, Indigenous land rights, human rights, Indigenous religions, violence against women, and on environmental issues. She is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the George Washington University in Washington, D. C., and Writer and Editor in Residence at Flinders University, South Australia. Bell was born in and grew up in Melbourne. In 2005, after 17 years in the United States, she returned to Australia and worked on a number of projects in South Australia. Bell lives and writes in Canberra.

Her books include Daughters of the Dreaming (1983/93); Generations: Grandmothers, mothers, and daughters (1987); Law: The old and the new (1980); Religion in Aboriginal Australia (co-edited 1984); and Radically Speaking: Feminism reclaimed (co-edited 1996). Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: A world that is, was, and will be (1998) won a NSW Premier’s Literary Award and was short listed for the Age Book of the Year Award, the Queensland Premier’s History Award and the Australian Literary Society Gold Medallion. Evil: A novel (2005) was made into a play and performed in DC and Adelaide. She also wrote Kungun Ngarrindjeri Miminar Yunnan: Listen to Ngarrindjeri Women Speaking (2008).

Bell trained as a primary teacher in the 1960s in Victoria, Australia. She returned to study in the 1970s but first had to complete high school which she did by attending night school at Box Hill High School, Victoria. Bell continued onto university and received her BA (Hons) in Anthropology at Monash University in 1975, and a Ph.D. from Australian National University (ANU) in 1981 which was based on field work with Aboriginal women in central Australia.

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