Alexandra Rose

Sponsoring Rotary District: 9510
Worked in: Brazil, Australia, Nauru, Mongolia.
Degrees from: University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology
Future plans: After graduating, I’m interested in working for organisations such as UNESCO to strengthen the work of museums and sites of conscience in acting as catalysts for human empathy.

Alexandra is an international development and museum professional with field-based experience in Latin America, Australia, Asia and the Pacific. She has degrees in Arts (hons) and Social Science from the University of Queensland and Pontifícia Universidade Católica (Rio de Janeiro) and post graduate qualifications in domestic violence and in psychotherapy.

Alexandra started international humanitarian work in 2016 on the Pacific Island nation of Nauru, supporting the resettlement of 2,500 asylum seekers from the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. Working under the rubrics of critical, peace, community and liberation psychologies, Alexandra developed and implemented protection-based interventions with displaced populations to foster conditions for social and personal healing in the context of trauma and conflict, in both camp and community settings.

After Nauru Alexandra completed a technical consultancy, supported by Australia’s foreign service, in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Alexandra, together with her team, worked to implement the UNICEF recommendations relating to the rights of child jockeys in spring horse racing and build capacity of local staff to respond appropriately to children at risk of harm, taking into account cultural heritage issues related to horse racing within Mongolian culture.

In 2017 Alexandra began working in the field of gender-based violence, at both a national level, as Practice Leader of the 1800RESPECT Specialist Trauma Counselling team, Australia’s hotline for domestic violence and sexual assault, and later at the community level, setting up and delivering South Australia’s first Specialised Family Violence Service, for culturally and linguistically diverse women experiencing violence.

More recently, Alexandra’s work has been in galleries and museums including the Art Gallery of South Australia where she led the delivery and development of an interdisciplinary project that introduced a decolonising approach to reading and interpreting artworks in The Gallery’s collection. The first of its kind for a state-run gallery in Australia, Alexandra’s project and research contributed to emerging thinking on galleries and museums as sites for peace building and has sought to be replicated by other large-scale galleries. Over the course of her Social Work masters Alexandra is interested in exploring the ways in which large-scale galleries and museums invite critical thinking and ethical reflection and connect past struggles to today’s movements for social justice.