LocuSAR is a small multidisciplinary social research and engagement team comprised of experts in anthropology, linguistics, history and museology.

Our strengths

LocuSAR has decades of experience across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, and has provided analysis, advice and reports to government, businesses, NGOs, and the Federal Court of Australia.

We are adept at developing methodologies and assessing issues with complex economic, developmental, cultural and social dimensions.

We have significant experience engaging productively with communities in crisis and facing challenging circumstances.

Members of our team are fluent in Bahasa Indonesia, Tok Pisin, German, and English, and conversant in a number of Indigenous vernacular including Arrernte, Yolngu Matha, and Mandar.

We have worked extensively with local and Indigenous communities across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, and our research has informed nearly 20 native title applications.

Our experts

First principles in LocuSAR’s research and reporting practices are:

•  Independence. We operate within guidelines for expert witnesses set by the Federal Court of Australia. In our native title and heritage practice we aim to assist courts and/or decision-makers with carefully researched and considered expert opinions.
• Even-handedness. We seek to hear and consider all sides and views in the matters we are considering. We are not advocates for any views put to us by any of our clients or by any stakeholders. We go out of our way to try and recruit a broad group of participants.
• Ethical Conduct. We seek to deal ethically and respectfully with all. Amongst other things this means respecting the intellectual and cultural property of others. We also seek wherever possible to ‘give back’ to our clients, including by providing them, if and as agreed, with copies of our research material and recordings at the conclusion of a project or the finalisation of a legal matter.
• Transparency. Subject to contractual and ethical constraints we seek to make our research processes – including the data we gather and consider, our reasoning and the outcomes of our work – transparent and open to scrutiny and testing. We welcome peer review.
• Multidisciplinary teamwork. We seek wherever practical to work in multidisciplinary teams. We recognise the fecundity of teamwork and of processes which invite researchers to consider different viewpoints, ideas and approaches, and to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions in our own practice.
• Rigour. We seek to work rigorously at the highest standards and conventions of our fields of practice.
• Staying within scope. We build multi-disciplinary teams because, amongst other things, we are mindful that experts should not exceed the scope of their expertise and that the projects we work on are frequently broader and more complex than any of our disciplinary fields can cover.
•  Leadership. We seek to be leaders in our fields and in the development of innovative and reliable methodologies, especially in developing robust and reliable multidisciplinary approaches for better understanding complex challenges.
• Transmission. Members of our core staff have had careers as university academics and have significant experience developing and delivering academic training including in native title practice. We seek to facilitate practical training and professional development more broadly. Experts in our teams regularly deliver applied professional training. LocuSAR also provides for paid training positions in our project teams. Our program has attracted graduates from leading Australian universities (Adelaide, ANU and Melbourne) and University College London.
• Safety. As standard practice we assess risk in all our work and develop strategies to mitigate and manage it.