Editorial - Knowledge Intersections: Exploring the Research of Central Australia

The papers in this issue emerged from the inaugural Knowledge Intersections Research Symposium held in May 2017 at the Desert Peoples Centre campus of Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education located in Alice Springs, Australia. The theme ‘Knowledge Intersections’ was Adopted for the research symposium and has continued into this volume. The symposium was held in conjunction with the 2017 Northern Territory (NT) Writers’ Festival, which had the theme of ‘Crossings | Iwerre-Atherre’. The language in the title came from local Arrernte people who interpreted crossings as iwerre-atherre, meaning two roads meeting, neither blocking nor erasing the other; two-way learning or travelling together.

Each of the papers included in this special edition explores how local researchers and the research work they are doing reflect these ideas of ‘crossings’ and ‘knowledge intersections’. Contributors were challenged to reflect on these two questions;

How can/does research help create intersections or meeting points for knowledge systems, without one blocking or erasing the other?

How does two-way learning happen in research and how does it help us to travel together?

Both the symposium and this subsequent special issue came about out of a desire to showcase and share the variety of research work being done across the central Australian region. It was also an opportunity to explore the ‘Knowledge Intersections’ to be found across and between this work. Together these papers provide an ongoing way of engaging with and exploring the intersections of knowledge happening in research in many of the remote and rural spaces of Australia.