Jess Weir is a non-Indigenous scholar who researches human-environment relationships in land and water and natural hazard governance contexts. This includes rivers, fire, weeds and climate change. She investigates how Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge practices and regulatory authorities interact, to explore the possibilities for transforming understandings about environmental issues in public sector governance and academia. Her research agenda is fundamentally informed by over two decades of collaboration with Indigenous leaders in Australia. She joined the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University in 2013.

Previously Jessica worked for twenty years in the public, private and community sector, including ten years with the Native Title Research Unit at the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS)