Roslyn Carnes

My work history includes advocacy and education in the community legal sector, counselling, crisis response, policy development and response, politics, management, domestic violence and community development in Tasmania and Western Australia. I have worked for both government and not for profits. My focus has, over the past decade, focused increasingly on issues facing Indigenous people accessing mainstream services. Some recent work in this area has been working with Peel Community Legal Centre in developing cultural self-awareness in order to move towards meeting national standards in this field.

I have a Bachelor of Education and a Bachelor of Social Work (Hons). The outcome of my PhD, “Unsettling white noise: yarning about Aboriginal education in Western Australian prisons”, includes a model for respectful research with Indigenous communities as well as a framework for improving accessibility to mainstream services and agencies for Indigenous people. I have published and presented on a number of related areas including provision of education in prisons; the link between unacknowledged sovereignty and trauma and comparison between regional and urban prisoner education in Western Australia.

I received the 2011 AARE Postgraduate Student Researcher Award for a paper on Aboriginal education in Western Australian prisons. In 2013 I received a Western Australian Institute for Educational Research Award for my thesis. In 2014 I received the Award for Best Education Thesis in the past two years from Murdoch University.

I have been the Discipline Co-ordinator for Aboriginal Studies at University of Notre Dame Fremantle. This role included teaching into this area of study. My current position is with the Centre for Rural, Regional Law and Justice with Deakin University in Geelong.