Dr Rob Ranzijn

Biography

Dr Rob Ranzijn is a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of South Australia. He was the leader of the Psychology and Indigenous Australians project team (2004-2009) which worked to incorporate cultural competence in relation to Indigenous Australians into undergraduate curricula throughout Australia.

He completed his PhD on Successful ageing: Paths to psychological well-being in older adults in 1998, in which year he led a multi-disciplinary collaborative research project into aspects of the economics of ageing in South Australia for the Office for the Ageing (SA).

In 2000-2001 he undertook collaborative research into the expectations of mature job-seekers, fear of crime in older adults, and Aboriginal aged care. In 2002 he led a project called Bounded choices, a university-wide collaborative research project into the limitations on decision-making in life transitions by older people. In 2002-2004 he led an ARC-funded Discovery project into the intellectual capital of older workers.

He was the project leader of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council grant (2007-2008) to fund the project Towards cultural competence: integrating Australian Indigenous content and pedagogies in psychology education. He was also a co-investigator in an ARC Indigenous Discovery grant (2007) led by Wendy Nolan, an Indigenous researcher, to fund the project Patterns of engagement: the contexts, frequency and characteristics of psychological practice with Indigenous clients.

This project has resulted in numerous publications, including journal articles, edited conference proceedings, and a textbook Psychology and Indigenous Australians: Foundations of Cultural Competence (Ranzijn, McConnochie and Nolan, 2009, Palgrave Macmillan). More information about the project, including downloadable conference papers, can be accessed from the project website www.unisa.edu.au/pia