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North Terrace Campus
Level 4, Hughes Building
The University of Adelaide
SA 5005
AUSTRALIA
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Telephone: +61 8 8303 5693
(Country and interstate callers toll free on 1800 061 459)
Facsimile: +61 8 8303 3770

Dr. Damien Riggs

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Phone
Fax +61 (08) 8303 3770
damien.riggs@adelaide.edu.au
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Area of Research

Critical psychology, critical race and whiteness studies, queer studies.

Senior Appointments and Memberships

National convenor, Gay and Lesbian Issues and Psychology Interest Group, APS

Publicity Officer, Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association

Member, APS

Psychology Research Interests

My PhD research examined what it means to identify as a white person in a nation such as Australia that is still very much in the throes of colonisation, where white people continue to benefit from unearned privilege that comes largely at the expense of Indigenous people, and through the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty. By developing a philosophical and theoretical framework through which to understand the racialisation of white subjectivities in colonial nations, my work in the area of race and whiteness explores how discourses of benevolence and claims by white people to ‘good intentions’ may be understood as rhetorical tools aimed at warranting white belonging, and denying ongoing acts of white violence.

Over the past two years I have also conducted research in the area of lesbian and gay psychology, with a specific focus on lesbian and gay parenting and gay men’s health and sexuality. I have extended this area of inquiry by exploring the intersections between my work on race and whiteness and my work on lesbian and gay psychology, and I am now interested in looking what it means to speak as a white queer person in a colonial nation: how may white queer rights come at the expense of the rights of other marginalised groups, and how may white queer people often fail to explore our complicity with racism?

My research, particularly as it informs my postdoctoral fellowship, is an exploration of the foster care system in Australia. This research seeks to examine the historical, political and personal contexts within which foster care occurs, and to better understand how shifts in social understandings of foster care have not been adequately reflected in the provision of foster care. In speaking with a wide range of people involved in foster care services, my interest is to map out some of the reasons why the Australian system continues to be ‘in crisis’, and to draw out some of the practical ways in which critical psychology may elucidate novel ways of understanding and engaging with this crisis.

Recent Key Publications

Riggs, D.W. (2006). Priscilla, (white) queen of the desert: Queer rights/race privilege. New York: Peter Berg.

Riggs, D.W. (2006). ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ Ambivalence and the national imaginary. International Journal of Critical Psychology, 16, 32-52.

Riggs, D.W. & Augoustinos, M. (2005). The psychic life of colonial power: Racialised subjectivities, bodies and methods. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 16.

Riggs, D.W. (2005). Locating control: Psychology and the cultural production of ‘healthy subject positions’. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 9, 87-100.

Riggs, D.W. (2004). Challenging the monoculturalism of psychology: Towards a more socially accountable pedagogy and practice. Australian Psychologist, 39, 110-126.