Julia Keenan

Julia Keenan is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining (CSRM), Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland. She has over 15 years' experience working on the social dimensions of resource development.

Julia's work explores the interface between resource development and communities, especially in contexts involving Indigenous rights, customary land systems and community governance institutions. She investigates how organisations, practitioners and partnerships translate high-level commitments and policy frameworks into practice and outcomes for people affected by extractive industries.

As an applied social scientist, Julia works closely with research partners to understand how resource development intersects with locally defined aspirations, development pathways and community futures. She has maintained long-term relationships with practitioners and stakeholders across the extractive sector and has worked across Australia and internationally.

Her work spans agreement-making and benefit sharing, consultation and consent, Indigenous self-determination, gender, community development, corporate social performance, social impact assessment, mine closure and post-mining transitions. Through comparative research across jurisdictions and sustained engagement with operations and communities over time, she examines how responsibility, accountability and authority shape the distribution of benefits, burdens and decision-making authority associated with resource development.

Julia contributes to research, training and advisory projects with industry, governments, community organisations and international institutions. Recent work includes implementation of United Nations Environment Assembly Resolution 4/19 on Mineral Resource Governance, involving consultations with more than 1,200 participants across 23 global meetings; and the Social, Cultural and Economic Studies of the Strategic Regional Environmental and Baseline Assessment for the Beetaloo Sub-basin.

Since 2023, Julia has coordinated CSRM’s involvement in the Community Smart Consultation and Consent Project (CSCC), which focuses on improving natural resource governance through community-based consultation and FPIC.

Julia holds a Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Arts (Hons in Linguistics) from The University of Queensland.