Rate My Professor Cameron Raynes

Dr Cameron Raynes is a Lecturer in the School of Humanities within the College of Creative Arts, Design and Humanities at Adelaide University. He graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours, first class) in Anthropology and Philosophy. After three years as a welfare worker, he pursued a PhD in Anthropology at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory, where his thesis examined the moral subtext of Aboriginal oral history based on fieldwork on Ngamanbidji Station, an Aboriginal-owned cattle station in the western Victoria River region. During his PhD candidature, Raynes worked as a consultant anthropologist on Aboriginal site surveys and land claims in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Upon moving to Adelaide in 1999, he was employed by State Records of South Australia and the communications company Ecocreative, while developing his career as a writer of history, short stories, film scripts, and novels; his novel First Person Shooter was optioned by Factor30Films in 2017.

Since 2010, Raynes has held various roles at the University of South Australia and serves currently as Lecturer in UniSA Creative. His research specializations include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, the history of engagement between Aboriginal people, government, and wider society in the twentieth century, speech pathology, stuttering and its treatment, and the application of the Power Threat Meaning Framework to stuttering-related mental distress. Notable publications comprise the book The Last Protector: The Illegal Removal of Aboriginal Children from Their Parents in South Australia (Wakefield Press, 2009), the novel First Person Shooter (MidnightSun Publishing, 2016), A Little Flour and a Few Blankets: An Administrative History of Aboriginal Affairs in South Australia, 1834-2000 (2001), and the journal article 'The most appalling disease one ever watched': Medical racism at Yorke Peninsula in the mid-twentieth century (Aboriginal History Journal, 2024, vol. 47, pp. 63-86). Raynes is eligible to co-supervise Masters and PhD students, currently co-supervising doctoral theses on creative non-fiction, ecocriticism in fantasy fiction, and ethics of compassion. His teaching strengths lie in primary source archival material, creative writing, creative non-fiction, and contemporary Aboriginal issues; he teaches courses such as LANG 2005 The Power of Story and LANG 3030 World Literatures and English. Additionally, he holds the position of Vice-Chair on the Stamily Board from 2025 to 2027.