BILL ARTHUR began researching Indigenous affairs in the early 1980s. Much of his initial work was land-related and was carried out for Indigenous organisations such as the Kimberley Land Council and Marra Worra Worra Aboriginal Corporation in Fitzroy Crossing. Since 1990, his research has focused more on issues of economic development, autonomy and policy for Torres Strait Islanders in the Centre for Aboriginal for Aboriginal Policy Research (CAEPR) at the Australian National University, and with the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Bill initiated the first edition of the Atlas at CAEPR, and was a Visiting Fellow there during the preparation of this second edition.

FRANCES MORPHY is an honorary Associate Professor at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University. She was, with Bill Arthur, one of the general editors of the first edition of the Atlas. Her research interests have encompassed linguistics, anthropology and anthropological demography in a variety of Australian settings, most particularly in north-east Arnhem Land where she has worked with Yolngu people since the 1970s. Her publications include 'Djapu: a Yolngu dialect' (in Handbook of Australian Languages, vol. 3, 1983) and she co-edited (with Benjamin R. Smith) The social effects of native title: recognition, translation, coexistence (2007) and edited Agency, contingency and census process: observations of the 2006 Indigenous Enumeration Strategy in remote Aboriginal Australia (2008).