Yin Paradies, the Alfred Deakin Professor and Chair in Race Relations at Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia started his academic life studying applied mathematics and computing. His first job, at the Indigenous Health Statistics Unit of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, took him towards his work in heath inequalities, on racism as a determinant of Indigenous health in Australia, and his current focus on decolonisation and Indigenous knowledges and perspectives. Paradies, who is a Wakaya man, and “the first person”, he says, “in any part of my family to get a PhD”, has since published widely on experiences of racism, and the impacts of racism on social and emotional wellbeing of Indigenous Australians, as well as on anti-racism theory, policy, and practice.