Dr Rachel Mathews

Biography

Dr Rachel Mathews is a lecturer in the School of Creative Arts, Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice. Rachel started working at QUT in 1991, moving from sessional lecturer roles to substantial contracts until 2003, when she was appointed in a full-time, ongoing position.  During this period, she also took short contracts with other organisations, including Queensland Performing Arts Trust, delivering a dance project for older adults and QUT students (1991); University of Adelaide, lecturing in dance (1994); and Clarendon College in Nottingham, England, teaching the A level (senior secondary school) dance syllabus (1995).  From 1996, to when she transitioned into full-time work at QUT, Rachel worked at Rio Rhythmics Latin Dance Academy (Brisbane) as a full-time, senior instructor and performer of numerous authentic South American and Caribbean dance styles, under the cultural guidance of the Brazilian proprietor of the business and through training in Brazil.  Latin dance remains at the centre of Rachel’s ongoing creative practice and contributes greatly to her teaching and research at QUT.  It is the subject of her PhD (2019):  Transcultural improvisations: An investigation of hybridity through a local Australian samba de gafieira dance community.

During the span of her career at QUT, Rachel has coordinated (and taught into) units covering various aspects of dance studies:  dance ethnography, dance history, dance analysis, dance in Australian culture, dance in contemporary culture, authentic Latin American dance, world dance styles, musical theatre/movement for actors, popular/social dance, dance technique, performance, and choreography.  She has also occupied various other coordination roles related to teaching at QUT:  Coordinator of an international project for student dance and drama teachers; Production Coordinator and Rehearsal Director for major dance productions at Gardens Theatre; Mentor for the dance students undertaking the capstone Situated Creative Practice units in which multidisciplinary student teams work on creative projects; Coordinator for all dance students taking Work Integrated Learning internships; and Tutor for all new international dance students learning English as an additional language. Rachel has also tutored for a diverse range of first year, school-wide, multi-disciplinary units.

Rachel has occupied various academic leadership and service roles at QUT.  She is currently, since 2022, the sole School Research Ethics Advisor for the School of Creative Arts.  She was Subject Area Coordinator (Dance) for six years from 2006 to 2011, Acting Discipline Leader for three and a half months in 2011, and Acting Head for six months in 2012.  During this period, she was honoured with a Vice Chancellor’s Performance Award “in recognition for a significant and superior contribution to the work of the University” (2011).  Other significant activity is the sum of her membership on various faculty committees, including, Member of the Embedding Indigenous Perspectives committee (2005), Member and then Deputy Chair of the Equity committee (2008-2012), Member of the Professional Development (long) committee (2014-2016), and Member of the Academic Appeals committee (2019-2021).

Rachel has been the recipient of two internal research grants, has reviewed manuscripts for esteemed dance journals, and has nine publications, three of these in Quartile 1 ranked journals.  Most of Rachel’s publications involve the scholarship of learning and teaching and pertain to dance in tertiary education and community contexts.  Her most recent paper concerns the Timor-Leste Dance and Drama Project: Facilitating English language learning through socially engaged arts practice.  This was an annual QUT project that ran for five years in which dance and drama students collaboratively designed and implemented, in-country, a series of workshops for Timorese high school students. Other papers report on projects involving Latin dance instruction in university and wider community contexts. Some of these papers delve into matters such as cultural consultation and authenticity, and community development through communities of practice, while earlier papers report on the use of structured self-reflection and teambuilding activities as a tool to enhance students’ perceived performance and maintain effort, and the use of self-reflection as an intervention to influence achievement goal orientations and intrinsic motivation.  Based on her achievements in the scholarship of learning and teaching, in 2017, Rachel was awarded with successful completion of the Expert Peer Review of Educational Practice (ExPREP) scheme – “an evidence-based review approach aligned with the Professional Standards Framework (PSF 2023)".

Currently, Rachel has one PhD student.  She has supervised, to completion, two PhD students, one DCI (Doctor of Creative Industries) student, three MA (Research) students, and two Honours (Dance) students.  She has been a dance advisor, as distinct from a supervisor, for two PhD students and two Masters (Research) students, and has examined five Masters (Research) theses.