Community Health

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Sally is an academic with interdisciplinary interests. She is an active member of the Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning & Education (RIPPLE). Sally received the CSU Faculty of Science Research Excellence Award in 2011.  Her autoethnographic PhD from the University of Technology, Sydney was on the Chancellor’s List 2010. Her Masters degree was from the University of Sydney in 2001. In 1995 Sally joined Lynne Adamson and Claudia Walker at CSU to establish the first occupational therapy course in inland Australia. Previously she has worked  in youth-specific occupational therapy, health service innovation, childbirth education and curative education in Sydney; in psychiatry in Sydney and London and, briefly, as an occupational therapy tutor in New Zealand.

Positions and Roles

• Lecturer in Occupational Therapy
• Honours Coordinator, Occupational Therapy
• Supervision of Honours and RHD candidates  
• Member of the School of Community Health Research Committee

Teaching

Sally is an experienced facilitator of undergraduate learning with a focus on the socio-cultural aspects of practice.  She uses creativity in learning and teaching, small and large group work, narrative approaches and readers theatre to foster communities of inquiry in student-led projects. She also enjoys Honours and RHD supervision.

Subject Delivery

• OCC413 - Occupational Therapy Practice in Context:
  This subject provides students with the opportunity to examine and explore broader professional issues that are relevant in the day-to-day practice of occupational therapy. The issues addressed in this subject are the contextual factors that support and influence the work of occupational therapy. An understanding of some of the broader professional aspects of working life will be developed through exploration of areas such as contemporary practice issues, trends influencing health practice, health management and successful employment strategies. Knowledge and skills developed in this subject are relevant to the students' future practice as occupational therapists.
• OCC205 - Occupational Engagement, Creativity and Group Work:
  This experiential subject enables students to understand and use creative, restorative and productive occupations in professional practice. Students are encouraged to view creative, restorative and productive occupations in the context of an individual's life experience, values and goals, and to develop the skills required to engage with people both individually and in groups. This subject builds on earlier subjects and focuses on life span theory concepts and models of occupational therapy practice in relation to children, adolescents, adults and older people.
• OCC304 - Enabling Strategies: Working with Communities:
  This subject focuses on participatory ways in which occupational therapists work collaboratively with members of diverse communities. It moves beyond individualistic approaches to health and examines the concepts within public health, primary health, health promotion and community development. Regional, state, national and international perspectives and policies relating to health and wellbeing are explored and students are asked to consider how these perspectives impact on the particular needs of 'at risk' populations.

Sally also assists with OCC100 - Occupation and Occupational Therapy, and co-teaches in OCC103 - Communication for Occupational Therapy Practice.

Innovations in Teaching

• OCC205: Groupwork Prac Exam
• OCC205: Pecha Kucha visual narrative + in class exhibition of creative pieces
• OCC304: Opinion Piece on a complex determinant of health (written/oral)
• OCC413: Peer-facilitated journal club throughout semester
• OCC413: Occupational Therapy Graduate Conference in collaboration with OT team.
  

Research and Publications

Sally is interested in health reform, the changing nature of health practice and health professions.   She is interested in building new theoretical and methodological tools for researching practice, including ethnographic and autoethnogeraphic writing incorporating visual media, and re-inscribing gendered bodies and heritages into the health professions.

List of Publications

• Denshire, S. & McMullen, C. (2013). Peering underneath mats of regulations: Preparing professional practitioners in health and business programs. Conference Proceedings RWL2013, University of Stirling, Scotland, 19-21 June, 2013.
• Denshire, S. (2013). Autoethnography. Sociopedia.isa pp. 1-12. Available to ISA members at: http://www.sagepub.net/isa/admin/viewPDF.aspx?&art=Autoethnography.pdf
• Denshire, S., & Lee, A., (2013). Conceptualizing autoethnography as assemblage: Accounts of occupational therapy practice. International Journal of Qualitative Methods. 12: 221-236.
• Denshire, S., (2012). Orchestrating a surprise party - A twice-told tale of derided interventions. Paper from Symposium 001 with Laurette Bristol & Tai Peseta, ‘Professions speak: Auto/ethnographic tales of transgressive practices’ ProPEL Conference Proceedings, Professional Practice in Troubling Times: Emergent Practices and Transgressive Knowledges, University of Stirling, Scotland. 9-11 May 2012.
• Denshire, S., (2011). ‘Le moment de la lune’. An auto-ethnographic tale of practice about menarche in a children’s hospital. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, 58: 270–275. doi: 10.1111/j.1440-1630.2011.00929.x
• Denshire, S. (2011). Re-inscribing gender into the heritage of occupational therapy in Australia: 'The Sock Knitter'. In J. Higgs, A. Titchen, D. Horsfall & D. Bridges (Eds.), Creative spaces for qualitative researching: Living research. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense (pp. 105-114).
• Denshire, S., (2010). The art of ‘writing in’ the hospital under-life: auto-ethnographic reflections on subjugated knowledges in everyday practice. Reflective Practice 11 (4), 529-544.
• Harris, E., &  Denshire, S., (2008). ‘The meanings of craft to an occupational therapist’. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal 55 (2), 133-142. (second author omitted in AOTJ  by mistake).
• Denshire, S., (2006). Towards an auto-ethnography of an occupational therapist’s published body of work, Conference paper in Proceedings of the ACSPRI 2006 Social Science Methodology Conference, New Ethnographies and Critical Creativity Stream, The University of Sydney, 10-13 December, 2006, pp. 1-21.
• Denshire, S. (2005). “This is a hospital, not a circus!” Reflecting on generative metaphor for a deeper understanding of professional practice. International Journal of Critical Psychology. Issue 13: Critical Professionals, 13, 158-178.
• Denshire, S. (2005). "Integrating the firelight": Theorising an evolving practice of creativity-based group work for health and wellbeing. In Promoting health through creativity. ed. T. Schmid, (pp.148-166) Whurr: London.
• Denshire, S., (2004). Imagination, occupation, reflection: An autobiographical model of empathic understanding. Proceedings of the Inaugural Qualitative Research as Interpretive Practice, RIPPLE Conference, September 2003, CSU, Albury, 21-38.
• Denshire, S. & Mullavey-O’Byrne, C. (2003). “Named in the lexicon”: Meanings ascribed to occupation in personal and professional life spaces. British Journal of Occupational Therapy 66 (11) 519-527.
• Denshire, S. (2002). ‘Reflections on the confluence of personal and professional ’. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal 49(4) 212-216.
• Denshire, S. (2002). ‘Metaphors we live by: Ways of imagining practice’. Qualitative Research Journal 2, 2, 28-46.
• Denshire, S. & Mullavey-O’Byrne, C. (2001). ‘Imagination, occupation, reflection: Ways of coming to understand practice’.  Thesis abstract, Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, 48, 200.
• Denshire S. & Ryan S. (2001). “Using autobiographic narrative and reflection to link personal and professional domains.” In Professional practice in health, education and the creative arts.  eds J. Higgs & A. Titchen, . (pp. 149-160) Blackwell Science: Oxford.
• Denshire S. (1996). ‘A decade of creative occupation: The production of a youth arts archive in a hospital site.’ Journal of Occupational Science Australia. 3, 93-98
• Denshire S. (1993). ‘Work of art: Occupational analysis of a children’s hospital youth arts program’. Youth Studies Australia, Winter: 18-24.
• Denshire S. (1985). ‘Normal spaces in abnormal places: The significance of environment in occupational therapy with hospitalised teenagers’. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, 32, 4, 142-149.
• Denshire S. & Bennett, D.L., (1985). Networking with teenagers in a hospital for children. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health.1&2, 217-224.

Community Engagement

Sally convenes a Writing Group and supports literary, arts and cultural events locally. She is a member of the School Research Committee.

Sally presented ' Re-inscribing the white, classed, gendered beginnings of occupational therapy in Australia' at International Research Symposium on Therapy & Empowerment: Coercion & Punishment, an International Research Symposium on the chequered history of occupational therapy at St Anne’s College, Oxford on 26-27 June, 2013.

Podcast available at: http://www.pulse-project.org/node/561

Memberships and Affiliations

• Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning & Education (RIPPLE), CSU.
• Professional Practice, Education & Learning (ProPEL), an international network for research at University of Stirling, Scotland.
• International Network for Scholarship in Professions Research (INSPiRE), University of Western Ontario, Canada.
• Australian and New Zealand Association of Health Professional Education (ANZAHPE).
• National Institute of Humanities.
• Occupational Therapy Australia.

Reviewer

• Sociopedia.isa - Online database with ‘state-of-the-art’ review articles in social sciences
• Australian Occupational Therapy Journal
• British Journal of Occupational Therapy
• Journal of Occupational Science
• Physiotherapy Theory & Practice
• Journal of Homosexuality