2012: PhD, The University of Sydney

My doctoral work explored health researchers' experiences of interdisciplinarity within the higher education setting. This was a phenomenological study that was informed by theoretical perspectives of identity. This was a journey of surprises as this work started with a focus on how researchers collaborate across discipline, but there was a shift towards how researchers within health constructed their identity within higher education, and specifically in the context of interdisciplinary research. The main finding of my research was that interdisciplinary research is a conflicted and contested space (and way of being) in which researchers’ identities are challenged and negotiated primarily due to a fundamental tension between their professional and personal values. My thesis illustrated health researchers' paradoxical experience of interdisciplinarity as both enabling and disabling and the identity work that they engaged in to negotiate their identity conflicts. My doctoral work points to the importance of how researchers (or anyone engaged in interdisciplinary work) in the higher education setting are supported to negotiate their identity as they collaborate, work, and learn across discipline boundaries.

2003: Master of Arts (Education) (Hons), The University of Auckland

2000: Bachelor of Arts (Educational Psychology), The University of Auckland.