Sue Malta Believes That Ageing Is a Stage of Life That Should Be Valued and Celebrated

Synopsis

Sue Malta believes that ageing is a stage of life that should be valued and celebrated. Her current position as a researcher at the not-for-profit National Ageing Research Institute in Parkville enables her to pursue research and evaluation projects across a variety of government and community sector partnerships, which have fundamental impacts at a grass roots level.

Sue has had a varied career as an editor, business owner, researcher and academic, as well as executive officer and personal assistant across a number of different industries both here and overseas. Her vast experience in these roles means that she is skilled in liaising and working with a range of stakeholders, corporate clients, committees and individuals, as well as possessing the technical and administrative skills necessary for producing a publication of note.

Sue also had the privilege of being the Executive Officer of TASA, overseeing its office move from Brisbane to Melbourne in 2008, being responsible for the establishment of the new office as well as instituting new systems and procedures, a role she job shared successfully. Sue is therefore familiar with the organisational workings of the TASA Executive and has maintained close ties with the TASA office through Sally Daly, who subsequently took on the role of Executive Officer when Sue left to pursue her PhD studies.

Sue’s academic studies have been at Swinburne University, where she obtained an undergraduate degree in Social Science (Psychology), majoring in both sociology and psychology and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in sociology. She recently completed her doctoral thesis on Love, sex and intimacy in new late life romantic relationships, under the supervision of Karen Farquharson and Michael Gilding (awarded 2013). Sue has received the following awards:

· Australian Association of Gerontology (AAG) Award (2009) Best Victorian Paper: Emerging Researchers in Ageing (ERA) conference

· Swinburne University Postgraduate Conference Scholarship (2007 & 2013): Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR) conference, Vancouver, Canada and the TASA Conference (Melbourne)

· Certificate of Excellence (2004) Highest result Qualitative Research Methods

· Certificate of Excellence (2004) Highest result Internship in Social Research

· Certificate of Excellence (2002) Highest result Sociology 1B

Sue has been a member of TASA since 2005, when she presented her Honours research at her first TASA conference and she is a member of the Families, Relationships and Gender thematic group. She has had various academic roles, including tutoring and lecturing duties (sociology) at Swinburne University and has attended many local and international conferences, where she has also been a plenary speaker (AAG conference, Brisbane 2012 and Adelaide 2013) and a session chair (General Online Research conference, Hamburg 2008 and TASA, Melbourne in 2008 and 2013). She is currently a member of the Victorian AAG Executive Committee.

Until recently Sue was Editor / Managing Editor of the International Journal of Emerging

Technologies Society (iJETS) (www.swin.edu.au/ijets), a post she held for six years, and was

instrumental in facilitating its progression from an Australian to an International publication. This open access online publication ran from 2003 to 2013 and was published through the Faculty of Life and Social Sciences at Swinburne University. The editorial role involved sourcing articles and reviewers, liaising with academics and researchers across a variety of disciplines in Australia and overseas, as well as all aspects of copy editing, formatting and publishing.