Komla Tsey

Professor Komla Tsey is Tropical Leader and Research Professor in Education for Social Sustainability within the School and The Cairns Institute. He is a highly qualified research professor with more than 25 years experience who provides leadership as part of transdisciplinary teams across the School of Education, The Cairns Institute and beyond to; undertake developmental research in the field of education for social sustainability; build a longer-term education for social sustainability collaborative research agenda; and mentor and support emerging researchers to become independent competitive researchers.

Professor Tsey is passionately committed to the ethical conduct of research, and to ensuring that research that he leads demonstrates tangible benefits for the research participants.

Professor Tsey was Head of the Central Australian Unit Menzies School of Health Research (1995-99) and contributed significantly towards the setting up of Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health (now Lowitja Institute) and was one of the CRC’s 5 inaugural Research Program Leaders. Over the past decade, Komla has led a research team at JCU and The University of Queensland to operationalise and build research evidence-base for Aboriginal-developed community empowerment programs.

He is an expert in leading diverse research programs into politically sensitive and contemporary health, education, welfare and other social issues concerning Australia’s Indigenous and rural Ghanaian communities and beyond. He utilises original and collaborative empowerment and participatory approaches to improving understanding of social circumstances and the relationship between these and government policies, thereby improving and sustaining health and wellbeing in population subsets.