DrSally Fitzpatrick

Sally is a public health academic with a strong focus on learning and teaching scholarship in Aboriginal health and wellbeing. Born in Gadi, Sydney, Sally estimates that her ancestors arrived here about six generations ago, including from England, Denmark and Ireland. This means that throughout her life Sally has benefitted directly from being a settler coloniser of these lands and waters.

Sally has worked as a lecturer and researcher in the academy for fifteen years, most recently as part of the Indigenous Studies discipline in the Faculty of Design and Society (formerly CAIK - the Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges), where she works as Subject Coordinator of Aboriginal Sydney Now as well as contributing to the group's microcredential offering. Sally also has a continuing relationship with Girra Maa Indigenous Health Discipline in the School of Public Health, where she continues to tutor in Indigenous health, and is a co-writer of the Faculty of Health's professional development course Ngalaya Indigenous Professional Development Foundation. 

Prior to these appointments Sally held research and teaching roles with School of Public Health, UTS, and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Office of the PVC - Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, University of Newcastle. Sally has a Master of Public Health (UNSW), a Graduate Certificate in University Learning and Teaching (UNSW) and a Doctor of Public Health (UNSW). 

As a practitioner-researcher, Sally's focus has been on Indigenous health education, in particular empowerment skills development among postgraduate students of Indigenous public health electives. Her doctorate illuminated change in students who learn about Aboriginal health, and emerged from Sally's experience at part of the team at Muru Marri (UNSW), working with Aboriginal Elders, scholars and community members to educate culturally capable health and social care professionals to prepare them as leaders in shaping a health care system that is culturally safe for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Sally has been since applied these learnings in working alongside the Girra Maa team to develop and refine their Indigenous health offering within the Bachelor of Public Health and more recently in the development of professional development coursework and the undertaking a major uplift of Aboriginal Sydney Now.

Sally's also has a deep scholarly appreciation of multi-level empowerment and healing, which she able to apply during her Postdoctoral Fellowship on a project investigating throughcare for young Aboriginal women exiting the criminal legal system. Sally's insights into trauma aware healing informed approaches are informed by her long term involvement on the committee and as President of the NSW specialist homelessness service for young women and girls, the Lillian Howell Project. 

Sally's research and teaching seeks to actively contribute to the reconfiguration of structurally embedded power relations that continue to oppress Australia's First Peoples through scholarship that illuminates the potential for students to develop their emotional skills and cultural humility through critical self-reflection. In this endeavour, Sally is now highly focussed on the opportunities afforded by the embedding of cultural safety in health professional accreditation.

In doing this work, Sally is mentored and draws strength from own relationships and reciprocal obligations to families and communities across Australia. She also draws from various leadership roles she has held in community organisations seeking treaty and social justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, through which she has witnessed first hand the importance of workforce development, particularly in relation to actively and respectfully listening to and honouring the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This has involved first hand experience delivering adult education and facilitating participatory governance approaches which have shaped Sally's overall approach. Her strong ethic of collaboration also draws from her first career in film editing and video production.

Sally is very grateful for the opportunity to contribute as part of the UTS family and to the field of Indigenous health education and Indigenous studies guided by First Nations leadership.