At the broadest level Professor Altman's research focuses on social justice and human rights for minority groups globally. More particularly, appropriate economic development and associated policy for Indigenous Australia; hybrid economy theory and practice; the economic engagement of Indigenous people with the Australian and global economies (especially in mining, tourism, the arts and emerging industries like carbon farming); commercial utilisation of wildlife and fisheries; the Indigenous customary economy and its articulations with market capitalism; land rights, native title and Indigenous land and sea management; and theoretical issues in economic and development anthropology. Empirical focus: Alternate development; Indigenous cultural and natural resource management; Indigenous economies, Indigenous policies, critical theory, neo-liberalism and the state in relation to marginalised groups; property rights, intercultural governance and the limits of western governance in cross-cultural settings. Methodological interest: Hybrid forms of development and governance and empirical means to document such alternatives in the face of neoliberal hegemony; empirical measures of inputs, outputs and outcomes in diverse economic settings based on primary data collection. Research projects: Alternate Economic Futures for Remote Indigenous Australia (2015 - current) This research focuses on the theorisation of economic hybridity as an alternative to incorporation in market capitalism especially in remote Australia but also elsewhere where indigenous minorities are seeking to develop viable alternatives to late capitalism while living on their ancestral lands. This research builds on efforts to advocate using evidence based research for alternatives that are sustainable and work and that challenge the current hegemonic approach promulgated by the Australian state that imagines mainstream capitalist development for Indigenous peoples who live remotely, generally on indigenous titled land in difficult postcolonial circumstances. A particular aspect of this research is a focus on the Indigenous community-based organisations that play a pivotal role in promoting such hybrid possibilities and the governance and resourcing challenges that they face. Indigenous natural resource management and livelihoods (2015 - 2018) Jon Altman is co-leader of Axis 3: livelihoods and food security: coping with neoliberal growth in the major international comparative project Centre pour la conservation et le développement autochtones alternatifs (CCDAA) or Centre for Indigenous Conservation and Development Alternatives (CICADA) administered by McGill University, Montréal, Québec under the overall direction of Professor Colin Scott. In this research Professor Altman will focus on his ongoing research with ranger groups working in the vast region from Kakadu National Park to North East Arnhem Land. The domestic moral economy in the Asia and Pacific region (2011 - 2015) This project involves international comparative work with the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester under a project 'The domestic moral economy: an ethnographic study of values in the Asia and Pacific region' funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK). This project is due for completion in 2015. Welfare to work or work to welfare? Will reform of the Community Development Employment Program help close the employment gap? (2011 - 2015) This ARC Discovery project is due for completion in 2015 and is a collaboration between chief investigators Jon Altman, Will Sanders, Boyd Hunter and research fellow Kirrily Jordan all from CAEPR at the ANU. This legacy project seeks to examine emerging labour market programs in remote Australia and their merits in comparison to the historically significant and now largely defunct Community Development Employment Projects scheme. This research is linked to Jon Altman's abiding interest in Basic Income schemes for remote Indigenous Australia daring back to 1987 and his links as life member and benefactor of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN).