Marcia Langton is a respected authority on social issues in Aboriginal affairs and Associate Provost of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne. She has published on Indigenous issues such as gender and identity, land rights, resource management and substance abuse. She has worked internationally on Indigenous rights, conservation and environmental polices. Langton also critiques art and films and has played leading roles in films including Jardiwampa: A Warlpiri Fire, Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy and Blood Brothers.

First enrolled at The University of Queensland, she left to travel and work in countries including Japan and North America, before completing a degree in anthropology at the Australian National University in the 1980s. She then worked with a range of organisations across a spectrum of Indigenous socio-cultural issues, including the Australian Film Commission (for which she wrote 'Well I Heard It on the Radio and I Saw It on the Television'), the Central Land Council (where she was a land claims anthrolopogist), and the Northern Territory Aboriginal Issues Unit (for which she worked on the 1989 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody).

Moving into full-time university work, she was Ranger Professor of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies at Charles Darwin University (then Northern Territory University) for five years from 1995. In 2000, she was appointed Foundation Chair (a professorial post) of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne. In 2016, she became Distinguished Professor, and in 2017, Associate Provost. Her PhD in geography was awarded by Macquarie University in 2005.

Langton's Order of Australia was awarded in 1993 ('for services as an anthropologist and advocate of Aboriginal issues'). In 2001, she was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. She co-won the inaugural Neville Bonner Award for Indigenous Teacher of the Year, in 2002 (with Larissa Behrendt). In 2012, she became a patron of the Indigenous Reading Project. Since its inception in 2016, she has served on the judging panel for the Horne Prize in essay writing. Other organisations with which she has served include the Centre for Aboriginal Reconciliation, the Centre for Indigenous Natural and Cultural Resource Management, the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council, and the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership. She is also a fellow of both Trinity College, University of Melbourne (from 2012) and Emmanuel College, University of Queensland (since 2016).

Internationally, she has been concerned with First Nations rights in Canada (including conservation and environmental policies) and with issues in East Timor.

In addition to works indexed on AustLit, Langton has also published the following works:

• The Quiet Revolution: Indigenous People and the Resources Boom. ABC Books, 2013.
   
• Community Futures, Legal Architecture: Foundations for Indigenous Peoples in the Global Mining Boom. London: Routledge, 2012 (ed. with J. Longbottom).
   
• Settling with Indigenous Peoples: Modern Treaty and Agreement Making. Annandale, NSW: Federation Press, 2006 (ed. with L. Mazel, O.K. Shain, and M. Tehan).
   
• Burning Questions: Emerging environmental issues for Indigenous peoples in northern Australia. Darwin, Northern Territory: Centre for Indigenous Natural and Cultural Resource Management, Northern Territory University, 1998.