Judy Atkinson

Emeritus Professor Judy Atkinson is a Jiman - Aboriginal Australian (from Central West Queensland) / Bundjalung (Northern New South Wales) woman, who also has Anglo-Celtic, and German heritage. She holds a BA from the University of Canberra, and a PhD from Queensland University of Technology. She is also a graduate of the Harvard University course, Program for Refugee Trauma - Global Mental Health Trauma and Recovery. Her primary academic and research focus has been in the area of violence, with its relational trauma, and healing or recovery for Indigenous, and indeed all peoples.

She co-authored the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence Report, for the Queensland government. Her book: Trauma Trails – Recreating Songlines: The transgenerational effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia, provides context to the life stories of people who have moved/been moved from their country in a process that has created trauma trails, and the changes that can occur in the lives of people as they make connections with each other, and share their stories of healing.

In 2006, while Head of the College of Indigenous Australian Peoples at Southern Cross University, she won the Carrick Neville Bonner Award for her curriculum development and innovative teaching practice. In 2011 she was awarded the Fritz Redlich Memorial award for Human Rights and Mental Health from the Harvard University Program for Refugee Trauma.

She is a member of the Harvard Global Mental Health Scientific Research Alliance. She presently serves on Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Scientific Advisory Committee on Closing the Gap Research, and on the Board of Directors of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation and sits on both the Education and Training Advisory committee, and the Research Advisory Committee; and is a Patron of the We Al-li Trust.

She retired at the end of 2010, so she could focus on writing, supporting healing work in Aboriginal communities in Australia, and volunteering her services to Australia’s close neighbours, Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea, while working with communities in educational – healing work, what she calls educaring.

In future years she hopes to support research opportunities for emerging Indigenous researchers, while mentoring and supporting researchers and research in Australia, Timor Leste, and Papua New Guinea providing support to the development of an evidence base on education-as-healing in community change processes, while responding to historical, social and cultural trauma, and promoting healing or recovery through educaring.