Zane Ma Rhea

I have worked with Indigenous communities over the last thirty years in various capacities. I am recognised internationally for expertise in comparative education and for improving the quality of education services to Indigenous people using a rights-based framework, focusing on teacher professional development, organisational change management, and the preservation of Indigenous knowledge in mainstream schooling through meaningful school – community - university partnerships with Indigenous families.

My three-stranded research program falls within the sociology of education, examining how ideas from diverse contexts are understood, produced, reproduced, legitimated and disseminated in mainstream education systems such as universities and schools. A number of journal articles, book chapters and a book "Leading and Managing Indigenous Education in the Postcolonial World" arise from this work.

My second area of research interest is in Indigenous-Settler Relations examining the role of food in Indigenous-colonial relations in Australia. Outputs from this ARC-funded project so far include a book "Frontiers of Taste" (Springer), a national conference, journal articles, and a co-edited special edition of the journal Artefact.

The third strand of my intellectual inquiry has been interest in Buddhist educational ideas. My thesis studies laid the foundation for research that has continued with research into the development of the first Buddhist school in Australia. I have given two conference papers about these findings, and have two sole-authored publications drawing on research from both Thailand and Australia. Most recently, I have published "Wisdom, Knowledge, and the Postcolonial University in Thailand" (Palgrave Macmillan).