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). Anthropological work Bell's first full-length anthropological monograph was Daughters of the Dreaming, which focused on the religious, spiritual and ceremonial lives of Aboriginal women in central Australia. The book has been in continuous print since its first publication in 1983 and subsequent editions in 1993 and 2002 engage with the debates the work stimulated. It is now well-established practice to have women's councils as part of the decision-making and consultative structures in Aboriginal affairs. Through her research and in giving expert evidence, Bell has been able to demonstrate that Aboriginal women are owners and managers of land in their own right. In 1986, Melbourne publishers McPhee Gribble, with Bell as author, won the competitive tender from the Australian Bicentennial Authority (ABA) to write a book about women in Australia for