Diane Robin (Di) Bell (née Haig) (born 11 June 1943) is an Australian feminist anthropologist, author and activist. She is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C, USA and Distinguished Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the Australian National University, Canberra. Her work focuses on the Aboriginal people of Australia, Indigenous land rights, human rights, Indigenous religions, violence against women, and on environmental issues.
Bell was born and grew up in Melbourne; has undertaken fieldwork in central and southeastern Australia and in North America; and held senior positions in higher education in Australia and the USA. In 2005, after 17 years in the United States, she returned to Australia, worked on a number of projects in South Australia and, since 2013, lives and writes in Canberra.
Her books include Daughters of the Dreaming (1983/1993/2002); Generations: Grandmothers, mothers, and daughters (1987); Law: The old and the new (1980/1984); Religion in Aboriginal Australia (co-edited 1984); and Radically Speaking: Feminism reclaimed (co-edited 1996). Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: A world that is, was, and will be (1998/2014) won a NSW Premier's Literary Award and was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year Award, the Queensland Premier's History Book Award and the Australian Literary Society Gold Medallion. Evil: A novel (2005) was adapted to a play. In collaboration with Ngarrindjeri women, Bell edited Kungun Ngarrindjeri Miminar Yunnan: Listen to Ngarrindjeri Women Speaking (2008).
Bell was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for "service to literature" in the 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours.
Bell was awarded the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship for 2023.
Work life as a teacher, researcher, consultant, writer and editor
Bell trained as a primary teacher at Frankston Teachers College (1960-1) and taught in a range of state schools in Victoria and NSW. After the birth of her children, Genevieve (1967) and Morgan (1969), she completed high school through night classes at Box Hill High School, Victoria (1970-1), her BA (Hons) in Anthropology at Monash University (1975), and a PhD from Australian National University (ANU) (1981).
In 1981, Bell worked for the newly established Northern Territory Aboriginal Sacred Sites Protection Authority; set up her own anthropological consultancy in Canberra (1982-8); consulted for the Central Land Council, the Northern Land Council, Aboriginal Legal Aid Services, the Australian Law Reform Commission, and the Aboriginal Land Commissioner. Her academic posts included Research Fellow at the ANU (1983-6), and then as the Chair of Australian Studies at Deakin University in Geelong where she was the first female professor on staff.
In 1989, Bell moved to the United States to take up the Chair of Religion, Economic Development and Social Justice endowed by the Henry R. Luce Foundation, at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1999, she took up the position of Director of Women's Studies and Professor of Anthropology at the George Washington University (GWU),DC. As the recipient of a fellowship in 2003–4, awarded by the peak educational body, the American Council on Education (ACE), Bell also worked closely with the senior administration of Virginia Tech as they revised their curriculum. Bell served on the board of trustees for Hampshire College for eight years. On her retirement from GWU in 2005 she was awarded the title "Professor Emerita of Anthropology". On her return to Australia in 2005, she was appointed Writer and Editor in Residence at Flinders University (South Australia), and visiting professor, School of Social Sciences at the University of Adelaide (South Australia). Currently she is Distinguished Honorary Professor of Anthropology in the College of Asia and the Pacific at ANU (2017).
Bell is the author/editor of 10 books and numerous articles and book chapters dealing with religion, land rights, law reform, art, history and social change. She has served on the editorial boards of several journals (Aboriginal History 1979–1988; Women's Studies International Forum 1990–2005) and was a contributing member of the editorial board for the Longmans Encyclopedia (1989) Macmillan, the Encyclopedia of World Religions (2005) and the Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia (2009).
Bell was a contributing consultant to National Geographic on their Taboo TV series (2002-4).