MsJodi Phillips

My career spans public health nutrition and food security, remote Aboriginal Community health, Vocational Education and Training (VET) and higher education across Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory. I've worked in hospitals, universities, the food industry, and non-profit nutrition and food security organisations and research institutes across multi-disciplinary teams, always oriented toward practical impact. That work has been driven by a commitment to equity, human rights and social justice, and a growing conviction that Western ways of knowing, doing and being have achieved real impact but have also been limited by the exclusion of Indigenous Knowledges. One question has followed me through all of it: how do we build systems that better address the determinants of equity and support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander self-determined solutions?

I joined Deakin in 2020 as a non-Indigenous Lecturer in Indigenous Health at the School of Medicine, on Wadawurrung Country at Waurn Ponds, and turned that question toward curriculum, embedding Indigenous health and cultural safety across Medicine, Optometry, Medical Imaging and Honours programs in ways that are evidence-informed, Community co-designed, and built to shift how students and staff think and practice.

As a non-Indigenous academic working at the cultural interface, I hold that position deliberately, as a facilitator, co-designer and advocate rather than an authority. My practice is grounded in a Two Ways/Both Ways philosophy, critical reflexivity, and an ongoing commitment to carrying colonial load so it does not fall disproportionately on Indigenous colleagues and students.

Artwork notes: 

The background painting in my profile picture is a collaborative artwork led by proud Wadawurrung man Rhys Jeffs and year one Medical students’ during a foundational Indigenous health and cultural safety intensive held on Gunditjmara Country in 2024.  I am wearing a pendant gifted to me by Jurrawaa Stanley (Kurnai/Wotjabaluk) in 2023.