Rosalyn Shute holds an Adjunct Professorship at Flinders University, where she taught for thirteen years prior to holding for several years the post of Professor and Head of Psychology at the University of Ballarat (Federation University). Her early career included positions in UK university departments of psychology and optometry, and extensive service to the British Psychological Society. Her teaching areas have been developmental psychology, clinical child psychology and health psychology. She coordinated postgraduate programs in educational and clinical psychology, overseeing the introduction of Flinders' PhD program in Clinical Psychology. For eight years, she was also Visiting Psychologist at the Women's and Children's Hospital, Adelaide. Through her research, she remains engaged with promoting the wellbeing of children and adolescents.

These lie in child and adolescent psychology, especially paediatric psychology, peer victimisation, and mental health. Adjunct Professor Shute has supervised numerous postgraduate theses, many using mixed quantitative and qualitative methods. She has over a hundred publications in areas including chronic conditions, vision care, aggression/bullying and school-based mental health initiatives. Her book Child Development: Theories and critical perspectives (Routledge) authored with Phillip Slee (2015), uniquely, covers both traditional and postmodern approaches. She and Professor Slee also edited the 2016 book Mental health and wellbeing through schools. Recently published for Routledge is her book Clinical Psychology and Adolescent girls in a postfeminist era. She has given invited workshops and lectures in the UK, Australia, Germany and Japan, and been a visiting scholar at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and Osaka University of Education. Adjunct Professor Shute is a founding member of Flinders' research centre Student Wellbeing and Prevention of Violence (SWAPv).