Dr Anita Devos - Researcher Profile

Biography

Anita Devos is an Adjunct Research Fellow with the Faculty of Education.

Anita's research program is concerned with exploring and theorising the ways in which work, learning and working identities are changing in the context of the global knowledge economy. She does this through an examination of learning in a range of sites, both formal such as academics in universities and informal such as migrant women in regional communities. Through her work she seeks to develop a set of critical perspectives that challenges notions of the universal subject portrayed in neoliberal accounts of globalisation and learning for work. She proposes instead a classed, gendered and raced subject who experiences work and learning differently from others. Her aim in this program is to generate fresh perspectives on work and learning that value and support difference, are life affirming and sustainable.

Anita has researched and written in workplace learning, professional development and mentoring; community and trade union education; and higher education, doctoral education and research development. She brings a feminist analysis and an interest in gender to her work in each of these contexts. Current projects include: the experiences of migrant women working and learning in regional Australia; the role of work related learning in building sustainable communities; knowledge in doctoral education; and how students from diverse backgrounds succeed in higher education.

She has held numerous grants including an ARC Discovery grant (250,000, 2009-1011) with Professor Terri Seddon and Dr Cynthia Joseph on 'Teachers work in learning societies' which analyses the work of teachers in a range of workplace and non formal settings in contemporary organisations; and a grant from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) to research the education, training and employment needs of migrant women in regional centres (80,000).

Anita's interest in mentoring & coaching grew out her work in teaching and research development at the University of New South Wales. Anita and her colleague, Jan McLean, were recipients of a Commonwealth Government Grant to design and run a research development program for women academics (60,000, 2000-2004).

With colleagues from the Faculties of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences, and Business & Economics, and the University's Equity & Diversity Centre, Anita is recipient of two DEST Higher Education Equity Support Grants (totaling 50,000) for the longitudinal project 'Diversity & Achievement: how students from diverse backgrounds succeed in higher education'.

Prior to working as an academic, Anita worked in industrial research and advocacy, equal employment opportunity for women, and in leadership roles in workplace training and organisation development.

Anita is the mother of two teenage daughters.

Qualifications

DOCTOR OF PHILOSPHY

Institution: University of Technology Sydney

Year awarded: 2005

MASTER OF EDUCATION IN ADULT EDUCATION

Institution: University of Technology, Sydney

Year awarded: 1994

BACHELOR OF ARTS

Institution: University of Sydney

Year awarded: 1980