A meeting place
The truth-telling pedagogies lab has been formed in recognition of the global work that educators and practitioners are doing to redress historical wrongs across diverse classroom settings.
We aim to bring together teachers, researchers and community members committed to this truth-telling and reparation, and expand shared understandings on how to best approach this work in education.
Justin Wilkey
Justin Wilkey is a Ngarrindjeri man, Lecturer and researcher (Indigenous Education) in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. Prior to entering academia, Justin taught extensively across primary and secondary education settings in South Australia and overseas in London, England. Justin’s teaching and research interests are in Indigenous education, equity, social justice and student wellbeing. His PhD explored the social and emotional wellbeing experiences and needs of Aboriginal students who attend boarding school in South Australia.
Justin was awarded a dual Churchill Trust Fellowship in 2025, and the project will explore how to teach histories of colonisation in ways that are honest, respectful and supportive of Indigenous students. Justin and his colleague, Dr Jessica Gannaway will travel to Turtle Island (Canada) and Aotearoa (New Zealand) to collaborate with and learn from international colleagues and fellow educators and researchers who share a commitment to improving teaching and learning praxis associated with truth-telling in education.
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Jessica Gannaway
Jessica Gannaway is a Lecturer and researcher in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. After beginning her career as a secondary school literacy teacher in remote NT, Jessica has worked in both public and private sector schools in the Northern Territory and Victoria. Additionally, she has worked with teachers, school leaders and Departments of Education to codesign professional development and improve classroom relationships through teacher reflexivity practices. She coordinates the First Nations in Education (Secondary) subject within the Master of Teaching. Jessica's areas of research, scholarship and publications include: relationality and identity in education, and teacher dispositions in relation to cultural responsiveness, truth-telling and anti-racist pedagogies.
Emily Dobrich
Dr Emily Dobrich holds a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. Her doctoral research explored how embodied learning approaches can be used to reimagine and improve adult immigrant learning experiences by promoting self-determination, fostering community connectedness and nurturing relational understanding of place, specifically with more critical awareness and respect for learning about the history, culture and presence of Indigenous People. Motivation for this project came from Emily’s positionality as a second-generation settler descent raised on Turtle Island. Her own learning journey and perception of the struggles of her immigrant family, related to a lack of awareness and understanding of the struggles of Indigenous People against white settler colonialism, ignited her desire to work in solidarity with new immigrants in her community to raise awareness and contribute to positive social change. Emily appreciates and is strongly committed to respectfully working with and learning from Indigenous Peoples and knowledges in her research and scholarship to right educational injustices and unsettle hierarchies of knowledge production.
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Melitta Hogarth
Professor Melitta Hogarth is a Kamilaroi woman and the Director of Ngarrngga. She is a Professor of Indigenous Education and Principal Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne. Prior to entering academia, Professor Hogarth taught for almost 20 years in Queensland, particularly in secondary schools. Her PhD on the rights of Indigenous peoples in education won multiple awards, including the Ray Debus Award for Doctoral Research in Education.
Helen Knowler
Associate Professor Helen Knowler is an Associate Professor and Academic Lead of UCL’s Eugenics Legacy Education Project. She researches the impact of exclusionary pressures in education and the professional development of educators. Her core concerns relate to reparative pedagogies in healing, repair and inclusion.