Samara Hand is currently working as a Research Fellow part-time with the James Martin Institute. A Worimi/Biripi scholar born on Awabakal Country, she is a PhD candidate in Law at the University of New South Wales, focusing on the challenges of realising Indigenous Peoples’ right to education within the context of histories of assimilative schooling. At JMI she is conducting policy research on new approaches to addressing the school-to-prison nexus in NSW.

She is a visiting scholar at the University of Manitoba and is also a co-founder of the National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition, an Indigenous organisation dedicated to backing the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people to reclaim their rights in education, where she leads the School Exclusion Project.