Dr Paul Collis
Dr. Paul Collis is a Barkindji cultural educator and storyteller based in Canberra. Paul has facilitated men’s business within our consultant programs form some years and since OneINMA began operations. Paul’s background is as a consultant trainer in the Australian Public Service, at Indigenous Community Volunteers, mentoring and tutoring at university, as a feature writer and Arts workers and teacher of cultural studies in NSW prisons and the TAFE system. Paul has been a long-term member of the ACT Galambany Circle Sentencing Court and was a cultural advisor at the University of Canberra. He has worked extensively in the prison, TAFE systems and in Aboriginal community-based health services in his career. He has led transformation and growth programs for Aboriginal men utilising his knowledge and lived experience of social justice programs, and cultural management at several agencies in his career.
Paul has a Bachelor of Communications degree from the University of Newcastle, and a Bachelor of Creative Communications (1st Class Hons.) from the University of Canberra. Paul gained his PhD from the University of Canberra in which he wrote extensive research on the identity and invisibility of Aboriginal men. The novel from his PhD ‘Dancing Home’, won the David Unaipon Award in 2017 and was recently published by the University of Queensland Press. For OneINMA Dr Paul undertakes his Story Ground © process of engaging people deeply in their own story and in the stories of their work, organisations, and process to reach higher levels of being. Paul grew up in Bourke in western NSW on his country and later was educated in private schools in Bathurst and Newcastle. Paul was taught his cultural business by his grandfather and Barkindji/Kunya Elders and has participated in the ceremonies of men. Paul is skilled at leading men’s business utilising his knowledge of Indigenous and non-Indigenous philosophies, storytelling, yarning, creative writing, and engagement on a deep transformative level.
Dr. Collis currently mentors’ young Aboriginal men via the University where he is a senior lecturer and in community-based settings in both Canberra, Redfern, and Newcastle. As an academic lecturer Paul is a skilled trainer and facilitator and has research methodology, qualitative and quantitative program evaluation skills and Indigenous research and evaluation monitoring skills. Paul is interested in increasing the wellbeing of all men, both cross culturally and in all relationships to bring harmony to society. He is a White Day Ambassador.
