Ed Wensing

Ed Wensing is an experienced planner, policy analyst and academic.

Ed has a deep understanding of the impact of colonisation on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities of Australia and the ongoing dispossession. He is committed to addressing these ongoing power imbalances and ensuring a sense of parity and justice between those worldviews and cultures.

Ed has technical qualifications in cartography, surveying and civil engineering, a Bachelor of Urban Geography with Honours in Political Science from ANU, and a PhD from ANU. His research topic was ‘Land Justice for Indigenous Australians’.

He has worked in government, the private sector, non-government organisations, professional associations and in academia. Ed has also engaged in teaching/research at various universities including the Australian National University (ANU), University of New South Wales (UNSW), James Cook University, University of Canberra, Griffith University and the University of Western Sydney.

Ed has extensive knowledge and understanding of Commonwealth/State/Territory laws relating to land administration, land use and environmental planning, Aboriginal land rights, native title rights and interests, environmental protection, natural resource management, cultural heritage protection and local government in every jurisdiction in Australia. He has a long track record of academic publications in a wide range of fields. His current research interests are in the intercultural contact zone between Indigenous peoples’ rights and interests (however defined by them) and the Crown’s land tenures and land use planning and environmental management systems.

Ed is also currently an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at ANU and a Sessional Lecturer in the City Planning Program in the Faculty of the Built Environment at UNSW.

Outside of work Ed enjoys spending time with family, including playing with his granddaughters, gardening, reading and writing.