Dr Sophie Rudolph

Senior Lecturer in Education/DECRA Fellow

My research is interested in the central problem of settler colonial racial domination in Australian contexts in which First Nations people have never ceded sovereignty, and its connection to global European colonialism and capitalism. Through historical and sociological work I examine the impact and dynamics of racial domination on education and the possibilities for education to address racism and achieve racial justice. As a non-Indigenous, white, settler scholar I attempt to engage critically with these issues of power and inequality even as I work within settler colonial institutions and am implicated by settler racial dominance. My PhD research investigated Indigenous education policy, its historical echoes and its political effects. My current project examines the history and contemporary effects of school discipline.

I am not currently teaching but have had involvement in sociology of education, Indigenous education and research methodology subjects.

Research projects

DECRA project: Examining the social, historical and political effects of school discipline.