DrNatali Pearson

Natali contributes actively to both internal and external service roles.

Within the University, she serves as a member of the Academic Workloads Collegial Committee in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and co-leads the Change and Innovation Research Cluster at the Vere Gordon Childe Centre.

Externally, she is President of the Indonesia Council (a sub-regional body of the Asian Studies Association of Australia), and an Expert Member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) International Scientific Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management, including its Working Group on Illicit Trafficking. She also serves as a Councillor for the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology and sits on the editorial boards of The Great Circle and the SEAMEO-SPAFA Journal. In addition, she co-host the internationally syndicated New Books in Southeast Asian Studies Network podcast, which promotes scholarly engagement on Southeast Asia.

Policy Impact

Submission to the Government of Timor-Leste's public consultation on the draft Blue Economy: Policy and Action Plan for the Promotion of a Resilient and Sustainable Economy of the Sea in Timor-Leste (2025–2035), September 2025. Recommendations addressed terminology, the absence of dedicated underwater cultural heritage legislation, recognition of customary practices such as Tara Bandu as maritime heritage, and the integration of maritime and underwater cultural heritage across the policy's strategic pillars.

Hansard

Evidence from two submissions co-authored by Dr Pearson was drawn on throughout Security and Prosperity in Asia: Building Asia Capability in Australia through the Education System and Beyond, the report of the House Standing Committee on Education (2026). The joint submission lodged on behalf of the Indonesia Council, the Monash Herb Feith Indonesia Engagement Centre and ACICIS (Submission 1) was cited in the Committee's discussion of national policy coordination in Asia capability and of ATAR incentives for language study. A second submission, with Emeritus Professor Greg Fealy, Lydia Santoso and Dr Elly Kent (Submission 135), was cited repeatedly across the report — on discontinuity in school language pathways, the shrinking footprint of university language teaching, the contraction of tertiary Indonesian programs, and the 'cliff edge' of Asia research capability as senior area specialists retire. The Committee relied on that submission as its sole source for the figures on the decline in Indonesian programs offered across the Australian university sector.