Duane Hamacher
Duane Hamacher is Associate Professor of Cultural Astronomy in the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne.
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Duane Hamacher
Duane Hamacher is Associate Professor of Cultural Astronomy in the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne. He earned graduate degrees in astrophysics and Indigenous studies and has appeared on TEDx, The Story of God with Morgan Freeman, consulted on films with Werner Herzog, and serves as an expert consultant for UNESCO. He works for elders in the Torres Strait and around the world to document traditional star knowledge for educational programs and public understanding. He wrote the best-selling book “The First Astronomers: how Indigenous Elders read the stars” (Allen & Unwin, 2022) with six Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders.
Duane holds honorary positions at the University of Southern Queensland, the National Autonomous University of Honduras, and the University of Cologne in Germany. He recently concluded a one-year fellowship as a CAPAS Fellow in the Kate Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Heidelberg University in Germany and serves as President and Founder of the Australian Association for Astronomy in Culture, Vice-President and President-Elect of the International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture, Associate Editor of the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, and is a founding member of the IAU Working Group on Star Names.