JON ALTMAN is currently a research professor at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University in Melbourne and an emeritus professor of the Australian National University in Canberra located at the School for Regulation and Global Governance.

He is also an adjunct professor at the Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods at Charles Darwin University in Darwin. From 1990–2010 he was the foundation director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University. Professor Altman is a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and an Honorary Fellow of the New Zealand Royal Society. He has a background in economics and anthropology and over many years has been an enthusiastic advocate for the power of critical and independent academic research to persuade in issues pertaining to indigenous economic justice in Australia and elsewhere. Much of his research has focused on land rights and native title, alternate forms of economy and the rights on indigenous peoples to live differently.