Dr Lani Russell
Senior Lecturer, Sociology
Department of Social Sciences
Dr Lani Russell is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Social Sciences. She was appointed in 2007 following a two-year research fellowship at GCU. Her main teaching responsibilities are leadership of the Social Science Dissertation Honours Project module and of Race, Difference and Migration, an Honours level module. She is also the Department’s Learning and Teaching Advisor.
Originally majoring in Psychology and then History at the University of Queensland, Lani went on to achieve her doctorate at the University of Technology, Sydney, in 1999. This interdisciplinary dissertation explored radical student activism and the labour movement in Australia in the '60s. In 2000 she held a research fellowship at the University of Sussex, working with Professor Al Thomson on an oral history project about inter-war return migration to Australia under the Ten Pound scheme.
In 2014, Lani published Sociology for Health Professionals, a Sage textbook, drawing on years of teaching health and social care students at GCU. She has published several peer-reviewed articles about whiteness in Scotland, specifically about the concept of cultural competence in health and social care. Recently her main interest has turned to understanding the ways relationships, institutions and ideas born of colonialism generate ongoing social and environmental damage. This interest is reflected in her upcoming module Race, Nature and our Multispecies Future and her latest research project which considers the entanglement of the Black Lives Matter movement, climate change and a controversial statue in a Scottish rural town.
Lani is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).