The National Museum of Australia is a museum of social history, and focuses on three broad research areas:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture
• Australia's history and society since European settlement in 1788
• the interaction of people with the environment.

These interrelated concepts feed into the Museum's three themes of land, nation and people. They constitute the intellectual and conceptual framework of the Museum's content and shape the nature, topics and style of each of the Museum's five galleries.

Land concerns the interaction between the Australian landscape and its flora and fauna with the people who have lived, and continue to live, here. How has the land shaped human settlement and society? How does it contribute to the national identity of Australians?

Nation explores specifically the idea of national identity. The population of Australia is formed by many separate strands, and visitors to the Museum are encouraged to contribute their own ideas of national identity.

People examines the way ordinary and extraordinary Australians have connected with, and been shaped by, both land and nation - and how that process continues today.