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Anna Spinaze

Anna Spinaze

Anna Spinaze holds bachelor degrees with Honours in Music (musicology and performance) and Arts (sociology). In between she studied towards a Bachelor of Medicine for three years at the University of Newcastle. Her sociology Honours thesis examined sense of place, community and identity construction for rural and remote Tasmanian health care practitioners, and received High Distinction and First Class Honours as well as a CRH Research Seeding Grant.

During 2006, within the first five months of PhD candidature, Anna was also a part-time research assistant to Dr Natalie Jackson (a social demographer at the University of Tasmania's Sociology and Social Work); assisting with research on a project investigating the impact of population ageing in Australia and looking into the retirement intentions of workers born between 1946 and 1965. From midyear 2006 she suspended both work and PhD candidature to have a baby. She recommenced in August 2007, and since then has had a number of conference presentations and two publications. These include one co-authored refereed article, "Will Older Workers Change Their Retirement Plans in Line With Government Thinking? A Review of Recent Literature on Retirement Intentions" in the Australian Bulletin of Labour, and a research book chapter entitled "'I'm a rural person': Sense of place for rural health care professionals" in a National Museum of Australia book Making Sense of Place. Full references and links to these are available on request. She is presently completing her PhD, writing up observations, interviews and filmwork undertaken with rural and remote health professionals around Tasmania. A keen community volunteer, she is also a community representative on the Huon Valley Health Services Advisory Committee.

Anna's PhD research is in the area of rural and remote workforce evolution, in particular looking at individual constructions of role and identity for individuals working within the health system, given rising expectations of chronic conditions work. She believes her rural and sociological backgrounds contribute to her research, in examining rural health systems, community and clinician needs, interprofessional boundaries, and the contextual social changes which impact on these.

Anna is currently supervised by A/Prof Douglas Ezzy (Sociology and Social Work) and Dr Peter Orpin (Centre for Rural Health), with Research Advisor Prof Sue Kilpatrick (Director, UTAS Centre for University Pathways and Partnerships). She can be contacted via anna.spinaze@utas.edu.au.