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Emeritus Professor Alberto Gomes is an anthropologist at La Trobe University, Australia, where he served for more than twenty-five years in a range of academic and leadership roles, including Head of Department and Director of the Centre for Dialogue. Widely recognised for his excellence in tertiary teaching, he has received numerous awards, including a prestigious Australian national teaching citation for inspiring students to think critically and become active agents of social change.

Professor Gomes is internationally recognised for his more than five decades of ethnographic research with the Orang Asli, the Indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia. His scholarship has made significant contributions to anthropology, Indigenous studies, political ecology, and decolonial thought, and is distinguished by its critical, counter-hegemonic, and activist orientation, with a strong commitment to Indigenous rights, social justice, and ecological regeneration.

He has also held visiting professorships and teaching appointments at universities in Austria, Finland, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Spain, and Vietnam, reflecting the international reach of his scholarship.

Professor Gomes is the author and editor of numerous books on Indigenous peoples, modernity, ethnicity, and social change. He is also the founder of the DEEP (Dialogue, Empowerment, Ecology and Peace) Network, an international community of scholars, practitioners, and activists dedicated to advancing social justice, human empowerment, intercultural dialogue, ecological sustainability, and transformative social change.