Rate My Professor Willi Lempert

Lempert's research specializations encompass the implications of Aboriginal Australian representations for community futures, based on nearly three years of ethnographic fieldwork with Indigenous media organizations in Northwestern Australia's Kimberley region from 2012 to 2019. His major publication, Dreaming Down the Track: Awakenings in Aboriginal Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), traces filmmaking as a critical mode of social and political transformation, centering on projects by Kukatja elder and filmmaker Mark Moora. Key peer-reviewed articles include “Indigenous Media Futures: An Introduction” (Cultural Anthropology, 2018), “Generative Hope in the Postapocalyptic Present” (Cultural Anthropology, 2018), and “Gesturing Across Settler Divides in Marumpu Wangka! Kukatja Hand Talk” (Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy, 2019); book chapters such as “Phrenology in Space: Legacies of Scientific Racism in Classifying Extraterrestrial Intelligence” (Reclaiming Space, Oxford University Press, 2023). Emerging interests cover Aboriginal sign language and hearing loss alongside outer space colonialism, informed by collaborations with SETI scientists, Indigenous studies scholars, and Native science fiction filmmakers. Among his awards and fellowships are the Wenner-Gren Engaged Anthropology Grant (2019), Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2017), Fulbright IIE US Scholar Program Research Grant (2014), and Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (2014). Lempert contributes to public discourse through lectures, editorial work, and innovative teaching projects like the Pejepscot Portage Mapping Project at Bowdoin.