Rate My Professor Rebecca Olson

Rebecca Olson is Professor of Sociology in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland, where she serves as Director of Teaching and Learning. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy from the Australian National University. A cutting-edge translational qualitative researcher and award-winning educator, her expertise lies in the sociologies of health and emotions. Her work advances human aspects of care, empowering students, teachers, and researchers to address emerging health challenges through collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches. As Co-Founder and past Director of SocioHealthLab, she leads efforts to make health and healthcare more socially aware, relational, inclusive, and just. Olson is Joint Editor-in-Chief of Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, fostering dialogue between clinician researchers and health social scientists. With over 100 scholarly publications, including news media and creative video productions, she contributes prolifically to public debate on topics such as medicinal cannabis, health professions education, climate anxiety, palliative care communication, interprofessional practice, and low back pain care.

Olson's research employs innovative methodologies like video-reflexive ethnography and critical reflexive ethnography to explore emotionally reflexive labour in end-of-life communication, patient perspectives on medicinal cannabis policy, socio-emotional aspects of smoking and lung cancer screening, and discourses of emotion in health professional education. Key publications include her book Towards a Sociology of Cancer Caregiving: Time to Feel (Ashgate, 2015); Emotionally Reflexive Labour in End-of-Life Communication (Social Science & Medicine, 2020); A Post-Paradigmatic Approach to Analysing Emotions in Social Life (Emotions and Society, 2020); and Emotions in Late Modernity (Routledge, 2019, co-edited). She has secured major grants, including an ARC Discovery Project on parents managing climate anxiety (2024-2027), NHMRC MRFF trials on medicinal cannabis for cancer symptom relief (2021-2026 and 2018-2023), and funding from Mater Misericordiae for palliative care communication studies (2017-2020). Her contributions extend to advancing biopsychosocial approaches in physiotherapy and ethical multiplicity in chronic pain care, influencing health policy, education, and practice internationally.