ProfessorRuth Phillips

PhD(UNSW), BA(UWA), BA(Hons)CommStudies(Murdoch)

Before commencing her PhD at the University of New South Wales, Ruth was the principal policy officer in the Western Australia Department for Community Services (now Department of Communities). Prior to that, she had worked in a range of policy positions in the WA state government. Since 2002, Ruth has been teaching full time at the University of Sydney in the undergraduate and postgraduate social work and social policy courses. She is the recipient of the SUPRA supervisor of the year in 2020 and 2023 and currently supervises a range of PhD students, in areas as diverse as:

• From Solidarity to Social Protection: Localised Collective Community Action in Indonesia Calling the State to Account
• Gender inequality in sport in Pakistan: An exploration of the experiences of elite female athletes in Pakistan
• Governing adolescent girls' sexuality in Indonesia through anti-sexual violence activism and policy reforms
• Exploring the lived experiences of ethnically marginalised men of colour who use family violence in Australia
• Enhancing Cambodian Higher Education through the Higher Education Improvement Project: An Interrogation of Its Problem Representations

Previous areas of PhD & HDR supervision

• Sexual Exploitation of Young People in Care (PhD)
• LGBTQI groups and social movements in repressive states; the case of Uganda (PhD
• Critical reflection and social justice in Oral Health (Master of Education, Research)
• NGO Accountability towards service users in development context: Kenya & Ethiopia (PhD)
• Post-trafficking support services in Thailand and Australia (PhD)
• Incorporating Community Based Education into Disaster Education in Medicine in Indonesia, a Postcolonial Study (PhD)
• Precarious places, precarious knowledges: Disaster risk reduction education in Australia, the Philippines, and Vanuatu (PhD)
• Constructions of Indigeneity in Indonesia - a postcolonial study (PhD)
• The Construction of Comfort Women as a Social Policy Problem: With the Focus on The South Korean Government Response (Master of Education, Research)
• Postcolonial feminist approaches to the role of informal literacy education for 'subaltern' women in Kenya (PhD) 
• Informal Education amongst refugee women's groups, a postconlonial study. (Master of Education, Research)
• HIV AIDS and social work curricula in Taiwan (PhD)
• NGO Networking & the Campaign against Child sex trafficking (PhD)
• The meaning of poverty in South Korea (PhD)
• Discourses of development and Inequality: Educaiton for All (PhD)
• Sub-Saharan refugee experiences of settlement policy. (DSW)
• Illuminating Power and Complexity in Sex Work: Building Knowledge for Social Work (DSW)
• Early Ageing Expereinces for Korean Australians (PhD)
• Dialogues of Difference: Citizenship Negotiated According to Identity in The Contest Between Literate and Oral Traditions (PhD)