Maggie Brady

I was born in Bristol, England and did a number of things before gaining academic qualifications: I worked for the BBC, lived and travelled in Africa and then migrated to Australia, living in Adelaide.

I went on to get a B.Ed. at the University of South Australia and taught high school. After some more travelling I worked as a researcher in the School of Medicine at Flinders University and became involved in a research project in an Aboriginal community looking at volatile solvent use. This experience led me to an MA in Anthropology at ANU, and later a PhD in Population Health also at ANU.

I have worked as a social and applied anthropologist with field experience in Indigenous communities since the late 70s. I started out at Yalata, SA. (near Maralinga), and because of that experience with the community was hired as a researcher by legal counsel representing Aboriginal groups at the Royal Commissin into British Nuclear Tests in Australia and subsequently worked as a member of the anthropology team that was one of the scientific rehabilitation studies designed to provide options for the clean up of the Maralinga Lands in the 1990s.

Most of my research interests have been directed to drug and alcohol use among Indigenous Australians, in the NT, WA, and SA and I have done numerous studies of drinking, natural remission from drinking, alcohol-related harm, treatment and brief interventions and other policy approaches.

In the early 2000s I worked in the Western Cape, South Africa on community development projects to reduce alcohol harm, and have been a consultant to WHO. I have published widely for both academic and community-based audiences and believe strongly in making good quality research and information available and accessible to people at the grassroots.

I have produced a number of community resources that are well known in the Indigenous alcohol field - for example 'The Grog Book. Strengthening Indigenous Community Action on Grog'; and 'First Taste. How Indigenous Australians Learned about Alcohol'. I co-wrote a South African version of The Grog Book , published in 2004. My work has always comprised what I hope is a healthy mix of academia and engaged and useful work.