Brandie Macdonald

Brandie Macdonald (she/her) is an Indigenous citizen of the Chickasaw Nation with ancestral ties to the Choctaw nation. Her work focuses on systemic and structural change in museums internationally. Currently, she is the Executive Director of Indiana University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Her 15 year tenure working in museums/non-profits is based around capacity building through transformative practice, Indigenous consultations, education, and fostering creative/cultural capital building. During her tenure in nonprofits, she has worked in areas of economic capacity building with Indigenous communities, with intergenerational healing through culture-driven curriculum and poetry, in gender and racial equity initiatives in the bicycle industry, and served as the Senior Director of Decolonizing Initiatives at the Museum of Us.

Brandie’s enrolled in an Education Studies Ph.D. program at University of California, San Diego. Her research and published writing focuses on the sustainable application of decolonizing praxis in museums which both enables and becomes the catalyst for transformative change and movement building. She holds a M.Ed. in International Education from Loyola University, Chicago, and a B.A in Applied Anthropology from University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Brandie is also a Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow, an American Alliance of Museums’ Nancy Hanks Award for Professional Excellent recipient, and a Smithsonian Affiliate Fellow. She currently serves on the board of the Museum Education Roundtable and is on the editorial committee for the Journal of Museum Education, and is the board secretary for the International Council of Museums’ Committee on Collecting (ICOM-COMCOL).

Curriculum Vitae

• University of California at San Diego, PhD Student, Education Studies, research focus: anti-colonial theory and    decolonial praxis in museums• University of California at San Diego, MEd, Education Studies
• Loyola University Chicago, MEd, International Higher Education, research focus: Indigenous Peoples, access and barriers, and transformative models
• University of North Carolina at Charlotte, BA, Applied Anthropology, research focus:
  Museums & NAGPRA, and the impact legislation has on Indigenous Peoples