Luise Hercus was a Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, having studied both Modern Languages and Oriental Studies. In 1962 she began working independently on salvage work in Aboriginal Languages, studying languages that were on the brink of extinction. She has continued this work ever since. She was Reader in Sanskrit at The Australian National University from 1969 to 1991. Since then she has been Visiting Fellow in the Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, The Australian National University, writing up grammars, dictionaries and traditional texts, and continuing fieldwork mainly in the north of South Australia and adjacent areas of New South Wales and Queensland.

Author's Pandanus publications

• The Land is a Map: Placenames of Indigenous Origin in Australia