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A ‘spirit’ of Indigenous healing, wellbeing and re-vitalisation has been quietly, yet surely re-awakening our personal-global Indigenous hearts, homes and nations for the last few decades. To trace, track and understand the source, force and course of this movement and release much needed healing into our communities, the stories of six Indigenous people who were raised in ‘against-all-odds’ identity development conditions, yet are now proudly and perpetuatingly Indigenous have been received, held, analysed and synthesised. To ensure the Original teachings, stories and Indigenous-centric scholarship of this research remain grounded in the vital and re-vitalising relevancies of our everyday embodied experiences of Indigenous source, a ‘Mana Wairua’ (‘spirit’ is primary) Kaupapa Māori theoretical form was created. By tracing the growing, yet not well understood movement of Indigenous re-vitalisation into and through my own and other Indigenous people’s hearts, bodies, lives and literature, the power, presence and movement of an indelible Indigenous source force, and the knowings, knowledge and language related to it have been re-emerged. This unstoppable force derives from the source of creation. It inspires the healing, wellbeing and dignity associated with Indigenous identities and development. Even when separated from our people, lands and lifeways, we continue to embody pools of Indigenous knowing that enable us to feel and respond to this force and to our Ancestors. This research confirms, a ‘spirit’ of Indigenous re-vitalisation is indeed stirring in and moving our personal-global indigenous ‘hearts-bodies’ and lives, however, subsequent to the past-ongoing silencing, denigration and dismantling of the institutions that taught us how to understand, speak about and align with it - a yawning discrepancy now exists between our almost unconscious-embodied, ‘individualised’ experiences, and our collective capacities to tune into and deliberately release these life-gi

This thesis draws on feminist post-structural theory, and the work of Nicola Gavey and Evan Stark, to bring to light the ways gendered sexpectations and coercive control work together within women’s stories to shape them towards catering for his (sexual) pleasure, rendering the women’s ability to say yes, no, or maybe to consensual sex, and meaningfully shape their sexual experiences, (virtually) non-existent. These gendered power relations produced women who were desperately, compliantly, and/or fearfully sexual within abusive heterosexual relationships. My thesis has sought to resist neoliberal postfeminist individualisation of women’s abuse in favour of the feminist mantra the personal is (STILL) political. From this feminist activist stance and in the spirit of conscientisation, I have creatively resisted institutional expectations of a doctoral thesis in favour of accessibility and the engagement of women (and our allies) outside the ivory tower of academia. If you are an academic reader this may be challenging to your hegemonic understanding of what a thesis “should” be like, especially in terms of content, style, language, and structure – ok basically everything! But I have taken this approach because I think it embodies the social justice aspirations of critical feminist psychology. In this sense, the presentation of this thesis is a form of academic activism, consistent with the theory and politics I have been immersed in over the last five years as I journeyed into the depths of our (sexual and relational) abuse. Finally, I have undertaken my own healing and conscientisation because of this research, which has led to a transformation of self and the reimagining of (my) relating and fucking towards safety, equity, and pleasure for all involved. I offer my reflections on this journey at the end of my thesis as resistance to the dominant expectations of women and OUR sexuality, and as hope that things can be different. In love and rage Jasmine

New Zealand’s (NZ) ‘inclusive’ school policies enable autistic students to attend a mainstream school of their choice, with the expectation they will belong, feel accepted, contribute, and participate in ‘school life’. Research has typically focused on biogenetic origins and diagnostic specificity, providing medicalised and stereotypical ways of understanding autistic people. Few qualitative studies have explored autistic students’ understandings and everyday lived experiences of ‘being autistic’ and ‘being in an inclusive mainstream high school’. Excluding their voice from research, necessarily constrains development of policy, pedagogy, and praxis, which might facilitate more inclusive experiences for this population of students. This study was the first in NZ to focus on the lived experiences of autistic adolescents in their senior years (Levels 1-3 NCEA). A multi-perspective, qualitative phenomenological design enabled three tertiary students, three parents, and seven advocates, to augment contributions from five high-functioning autistic adolescents. This research was underpinned by a feminist standpoint epistemology and Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model, privileging first person experiences and contextual influences. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis enabled participants’ understandings and experiences to be explored. Tertiary students illumined how medical model understandings of disability constrained and enabled identity formation in high school and implicated being understood. Most of the autistic participants drew on neoliberal ‘governmentality’ to problematise barriers to inclusion, namely ‘governance’ (dominant culture, school rules, and regulation of ‘space’), teacher performativity, and curriculum management. Salient interpersonal barriers included authoritative teachers, social cliques, ‘invisible’ bullying, and ‘one-off’ grievances. ‘Being excluded’ was painful and resulted in feeling ‘de-valued’, impacting motivation and opportunities for

This research explores how Malay adolescents with behavioural issues make sense of their family life experiences. This research utilised Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). This research involved eight (8) Malay male participants, aged between 16 and 18 years. The participants who were selected through purposive sampling were recruited from a rehabilitation centre for young offenders in Malaysia. The participants attended at least two semi-structured interview sessions. Each interview session was conducted in Malay, and each session lasted between 50 and 60 minutes. These interviews, which were digitally audiotaped, were then transcribed, checked and verified accordingly, translated from Malay into English, and analysed using the IPA method. The results suggest that the participants understanding of their family lived experiences is constructed reflective to the complex relationship between the traditional Malay cultures, values, beliefs and practices, which are much influenced by Islamic teaching, the emergent new values and worldviews associated with globalisation and modernisation. Through the emerging themes, the participants pictured that the interactions between family members, parents were essential to them. But their interpretation of such interactions had conflicting values with the normality of the local belief and practices, which played roles in their criminal engagement. Thus, it can be understood that these affected adolescents were not necessarily problematic internally, but they just reacted to the changing context around them, especially to their family institution.

This research is designed to explore how Malay adolescents who have been identified with conduct issues understand their school experiences. This research is a qualitative research, which utilized Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as an analysis method. Ten participants were recruited from a rehabilitation center for young offenders in Malaysia. Each participant completed at least two semi-structured interviews. The interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed, translated and analyzed for content. Through the emerging themes namely subject-oriented, issues pertaining to English as a medium of instruction, the nature of the school, inconsistency between personal interests and what the school has to offer, experiencing teaching and learning issues and individual differences related to school experiences, analysis suggest that participants felt disadvantaged by the school system. They felt that the education policies and school environment were irrelevant and unresponsive to their capabilities, needs, desires and interests. Thus, apart from benefiting people who work closely with these adolescents, this research provides the voice for the participant so that they feel heard.

This project begins with a story of my encounter with a sense of the similarities and differences between my own experience of motherhood and that of another woman charged, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for child murder, and a question about how it is possible for our experience to be so similar and different. My understanding of this encounter is informed by theories of 'écriture féminine' and the assumption that the diversity of women's lived experiences is delimited by discourses through which 'woman' is constituted culturally and historically. In relation to poststructuralist assumptions about the constitution of subjectivity, my initial question is transformed into a problematic. This transformation is performed through a theoretical engagement with work by Foucault, Lyotard, White and Lacan. In reading these theories the problematic of woman-mother-childkiller becomes a question of how specific women are positioned within a phallocentric system of signification through narratives legitimated by a phallocentric moral order and told through discourses of legitimated knowledge of subjectivity: the 'psy' discourses. The complicity of women's positioning within moral order and social power relations demands attention to the ethics of the problematic and its mode of address. To address the possibility of an ethical response, I make use of Derrida's work on deconstruction as ethics. After reading Derrida the general question of women's positioning becomes a specific deconstructive reading of a narrative told at the site of coarticulation of legal practice and psychological discourse: a reading of the judge's summation in the trial of R v Lisé Turner. The deconstruction is practised through reading for the traces of sexual difference in the constitution of the subject in Law and psychological discourse, the legitimation of knowledge practised as a delimitation of psychological discourse in relation to Law, the constitution of crime, disease, mental diso

In the context of women's exclusion from knowledge production and reproduction in psychology, this thesis is a reading of psychological, feminist and poststructuralist feminist texts for discursive resources that constitute spirituality. These readings informed my analysis of texts produced by 10 women. The analysis was focused on three questions: Do these texts reproduce the discourses identified in psychological, feminist or poststructuralist feminist accounts of spirituality? Are other discursive resources used, especially those which may be regarded as 'subjugated knowledges'? Do the subject positions constituted through the discourses realised in these texts, challenge the phallocentric positioning of women at this local site of accounting for 'spiritual experience'? The discursive strategies used in analysis were informed by Parker's (1992) criteria for identifying discourses. The analysis focused on whether the women reproduced the discourses identified as they articulated their experiences of spirituality. Other discourses were identified. The discursive resources identified in the texts and their possibilities of transforming phallocentrism are discussed.