The Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Thesis Excellence

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After completing a doctoral thesis on this poetic form, I was stunned and delighted to hear it had received the Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Thesis Excellence. 

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Notwithstanding my moment of ‘glory in the sun’, for who wouldn’t want to shake hands with a saint! – the deeper joy was public recognition that this work holds valuable potential for a greater population.

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Thus it was a great honour to receive this award from Professor Robert Saint, and to meet Prof. Tara Brabazon, Dean of Graduate Studies whose weekly Vlogs had often sharpened my reflective practice. Most hearteningly, both my stellar supervisors, Dr Leigh Burrows and Associate Professor Kathy Arthurson were present as was my mindfulness colleague, Dr Nicole Albrecht, members of my family, and four members of my ‘extended Kangaroo Island family’, the Horbelts, whose rich connection dates back to our Auckland graduate teaching and learning days at AUT University. 

 

This occasion was an opportunity to acknowledge a number of people, especially co-researchers and supervisors, without whose thoughtful participation, this work would not exist. It includes the generous Australian Government Research Scholarship that made the three-year intensive study viable once I received the ‘green light’ from the Doctoral Studies Board and the Ethics Committee to proceed.

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Read the Flinders University Q&A with Gaylene: 

The PhD experience at Flinders University
with Dr Gaylene Denford-Wood

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