The Yulendj Weelam PhD Supervisory Approach

The Yulendj Weelam Lab is emerging as a nationally significant site for First Nations design practice research within architecture, landscape architecture and allied design and creative disciplines. Following the successful completion of Gamilaraay architectural designer Beau de Belle in 2024, one of the first completed First Peoples design practice research PhDs in Australia, the Lab is increasingly recognised as a culturally safe and intellectually rigorous environment for both First Peoples and non-Indigenous candidates working with Indigenous knowledges, Country-centred practice, and relational design research. Grounded in principles of reciprocity, respect, and responsibility, the Lab recognises that Indigenous design research operates across multiple knowledge and cultural systems and therefore requires supervisory models capable of supporting both disciplinary excellence and culturally safe relational practice.

The YWLab provides a supervision model that responds to the particular complexities of Indigenous design research within the contemporary academy where issues of knowledge extraction and exclusion have historically been rife. This supervision model embraces creative practice explored within the context of the built environment as an approach through which academic disciplinary knowledge can be challenged and extended whilst also recognising that Indigenous Knowledges have their own sovereignty, value and sanctity. The YW Lab recognises that design practice research requires highly discipline-specific expertise in architecture, landscape architecture, and spatial practice underpinned by cultural authority, relational accountability, and candidate-specific approaches to cultural safety. The YW model provides a culturally safe space from which all design practice research candidates can both challenge and build knowledges.