Robyn McKenzie was born in the South Island of New Zealand. She currently lives and works in Canberra, Australia on Ngambri/ Ngunnawal country. She trained as an Art Historian at the University of Melbourne and wrote extensively on Contemporary Australian Art earlier in her career, including three years as Visual Arts Critic on The Age newspaper in Melbourne. In 2016 she was awarded a PhD from the Australian National University undertaken in the Interdisciplinary Cross Cultural Research Program for a project focussed on the collection of string figures from Yirrkala at the Australian Museum in Sydney. Her work has since been focussed on researching museum collections of Australian Indigenous material culture. She held a post-doctoral position at the ANU from 2016–22, and is currently working as a researcher in the School of History.