Tina Besley - BA, DipTchg, DipEd, MEd (Dist), PhD

Tina Besley completed her undergraduate and masters degrees at Canterbury, specialising in counselling, before graduating with a PhD in Education from The University of Auckland in 2001.

Tina's thesis, which was supervised by Professor James Marshall and Dr Hans Everts, was developed into a book called Counseling Youth, which was warmly received by the academic community. It was one of the first texts to use the ideas of the contemporary French philosopher Michel Foucault in relation to counselling and questions of youth identity.

Tina has a strong commitment to research on Maori sexuality education, having written a monograph on the subject while at Canterbury. Subsequently, she worked as a school counsellor in Christchurch and West Auckland, where she had strong involvement with the Strengthening Families programme and worked closely with social agencies to help prevent truancy.

Tina was initially appointed as a research fellow at the University of Glasgow, and later was appointed to the position of lecturer. She is on the editorial board of five journals; is book reviews editor for the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling; and is joint editor of a forthcoming special issue of the journal on new work utilising Foucault's philosophy.

In 2005 Tina was offered an appointment at the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

With her husband, fellow graduate Michael Peters, Tina moved to Champaign, which is located approximately two hours from Chicago. Her position will allow her to spend three months of the year in New Zealand, where the couple have family.