Professor Rob Watts
Professor in Social Science
Details
-
College: School of GUSS
-
Department: School of GUSS
-
Campus: City Campus Australia
-
rob.watts@rmit.edu.au
Open to
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
About
At a time when the critical role and work of a public university is under attack from so many quarters, Rob believes that university teachers work out what being a good teacher demands of them while being actively engaged in socially valuable research and writing. This requires first of all showing what ought to be done rather than just talking about it, and a passionate engagement with the activities which define a university’s role. Passion here is understood as Nietszche once put it less in terms of intensity and more in terms of duration.
Rob’s work as a teacher and a writer has been driven by an abiding and deep intellectual curiosity and a desire to better understand ourselves and our world as a prelude to doing better so that we can all lead flourishing lives. As a teacher, he wants to inspire all of his students especially first year students and to show them something of the delights that come from thinking well, and why that has everything to do with doing well as professionals employed across the whole range of community services and public policy where our graduates work. He continues to teach and to supervise students doing higher degrees by research.
He has never seen any virtue in narrowly defined research projects or in teaching the same stuff year after year and continues to write and teach across any number of disciplinary and intellectual traditions. Cowardice, laziness and a persistent capacity to either deny the obvious or flee into fantasies of one sort or another especially when inspired by risk-averse managerialism are the only obstacles to having good universities or a good society. That modern universities, governments, the corporate sector (including the mass media) and the community sector all provide examples of both the constraints on and the possibilities of thinking better and doing better provide a constant source of provocation for all his work.
He continues to care about clarity of thought, speaking and writing, still loves the music of J.S. Bach, and adores his many grandchildren.
- Policy Studies
- Ethics and Good Practice
- History of Ideas
- Applied Human Rights
- Organisational Studies
Rob’s work as a teacher and a writer has been driven by an abiding and deep intellectual curiosity and a desire to better understand ourselves and our world as a prelude to doing better so that we can all lead flourishing lives. As a teacher, he wants to inspire all of his students especially first year students and to show them something of the delights that come from thinking well, and why that has everything to do with doing well as professionals employed across the whole range of community services and public policy where our graduates work. He continues to teach and to supervise students doing higher degrees by research.
He has never seen any virtue in narrowly defined research projects or in teaching the same stuff year after year and continues to write and teach across any number of disciplinary and intellectual traditions. Cowardice, laziness and a persistent capacity to either deny the obvious or flee into fantasies of one sort or another especially when inspired by risk-averse managerialism are the only obstacles to having good universities or a good society. That modern universities, governments, the corporate sector (including the mass media) and the community sector all provide examples of both the constraints on and the possibilities of thinking better and doing better provide a constant source of provocation for all his work.
He continues to care about clarity of thought, speaking and writing, still loves the music of J.S. Bach, and adores his many grandchildren.
- Policy Studies
- Ethics and Good Practice
- History of Ideas
- Applied Human Rights
- Organisational Studies
Supervisor projects
- Changing conceptions of masculinity and fatherhood in contemporary Australia: an ethnographic study of young Australian fathers
- 18 Jan 2023
- Work-Integrated Learning For Criminal Justice Students: Impacts on Skills, Employment and Punitive Attitudes
- 10 Jan 2023
- From prisoner to reintegration worker: An exploration of the Victorian reintegration sector policy to employing ex-prisoners
- 18 Dec 2021
- Making sense of welfare quarantining in Australia
- 20 Oct 2021
- Ordinary Australians' sensemaking of the Anthropocene world
- 1 Jul 2021
- Ceremony of Restoration: A Practice-Based Experiment in Civil Celebrancy
- 31 Aug 2017
- Thinking practice: A conceptualisation of good practice in human services with a focus on youth work
- 16 Jul 2012
- The IPA, NGOs and the Problem of Accountability
- 16 Feb 2004
Teaching interests
Labour market restructuring and social security policy in the 21st century. Private investment in public infrastructure. The history of social theory in Australia. The history of eugenics in Australia. Youth culture and bodgies and widgies. Youth policy.
Research interests
Explorations in good practice; Beyond the law; developing a human rights culture; Children, young people and a new political imaginary; The legitimacy of law and politics: beyond Habermas and Schmitt; States of Illegality: asylum seekers and legal black and gray holes; The crisis of authority in the Australian university
