Skip navigation to main content

You are here: UNE Home / Staff / Mary Ditton

Mary Ditton

Mary Ditton

Senior Lecturer, Faculty of The Professions, School of Health

Qualifications

MB BS, DPM, MBA, DHSM

Contact

Email:
Room: Pat O'Shane Building (C13)
Phone: 02 6773 3668 (or +61 2 6773 3668 overseas)
Fax: 02 6773 2755
Mobile: 0434 954 881

Hello there

I’m Mary Ditton and welcome to my little space in the School of Health at University of New England.

I work in the Health Management team in the School of Health and I participate in the other areas as well including, Nursing, Gerontology, Counselling and Health Sciences. Consequently my teaching responsibilities cover a number of the subject areas in these disciplines.

Because I was a medical practitioner for 20 years I entered academia as a second career. I did a Masters of Business Administration at University of Southern Queensland in 1999 and thoroughly enjoyed all the new areas that I had to explore with those studies.  I came to UNE and completed my Doctorate of Health Services Management in 2005.  Although Doctoral studies are challenging I leant a great deal along the way.

I have travelled to Thailand seven of eight times over the last few years with various research projects into primary health care in the rural areas, developing teaching curricula for the rural health workforce, and studying the plight of the migrants from Burma in Thailand. The later project area will probably occupy me for a long time, as poverty and migration are very significant international public health issues. I have colleagues in Churlalongkorn University and Assumption University in Bangkok and good rapport with Non-Government Organisations that offer good advice with this research.

Cross cultural teaching and research is so much part of our lives with globalisation. As familiar as multiculturalism is, intercultural exchanges are important to recognise and study in order to come to grips with cultural myths and extend our understanding. I did a small study of postgraduate students from several different cultures and I was confronted with difficulty that students had in understanding lecturers. I found that these same students learnt more quickly when they were in multicultural groups as they all tried to grapple with difficult concepts in their courses.

I am a keen teacher and I am very interested in talking to you about any of your education enquiries. I am always willing to take on postgraduate students and help them with their Masters or Doctoral studies.

 

Research interests

My research areas are:

Humanitarian Research

  •     Ethics of humanitarian research in cross-cultural contexts
  •     Millennium Development Goals
  •     Social Determinants of Health
  •     Migration and Work
  •     Education for migrant children with disabilities

Educational Research

  •     Cross-cultural education

Safety and quality in health care

  •     Consumers’ perspectives
  •     International comparisons in safety and quality in healthcare

Research highlights:

  1. Ditton, M.J 2010, Ethnic communities of people from Burma in the centre of Thailand: Generating a movement for human rights and employee rights across a new transnational frontier. In ‘Borders in the Center: Frontiers and peripheries in Asia’, edited by Mala Rajo Sathian, University of Malaya, Malaysia Duncan McDuie-Ra, University of New South Wales, Australia Ulises Granados, The University of Tokyo, Japan for IIAS press.  (In press)
  2. Ditton, M.J. 2009, ‘How social relationships influence academic health in the ‘enterprise university’: an insight into productivity of knowledge workers’, HERDSA, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 151-164. (A ranked journal)
  3. Ditton, M.J. 2007, ‘Intercultural qualitative research and PhD students’, Intercultural Education, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 41-52. (B ranked journal)
  4. Ditton, M.J. & Lehane, L. 2009, ‘Towards realising the health-related Millennium Development Goals for migrants from Burma in Thailand’, Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, vol. 4, no. 3, 37-48.
  5. Ditton, M.J. & Lehane, L. 2009, ‘The control of foreigners as researchers’, Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, vol. 4, no. 3, 49-58.
  6. Ditton, MJ (2010). Cross cultural perspectives on research ethics in Southeast Asian countries’.  Transmission of academic values in Asian Studies, 25 & 26 June 2009, The Australian National University, Canberra. Conference proceedings (in press).
  7. Ditton, M.J. & Lehane, L. 2009, The active role of interpreters in narrative development in two cross-cultural studies in Thailand  2nd Australasian Narrative Inquiry Conference, Embracing Multiple Dimensions, 12-13 July 2009 University of New England, Armidale NSW Australia.  This paper has been peer reviewed for inclusion in new online narrative inquiry journal, Current Narratives, which was launched during the conference. (in press).