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. She has won a national prize (Australia and New Zealand, all disciplines) for engaging scholarly writing, and an Australian Violence Prevention Award. Invited presentations have included the inaugural Constance Davey Memorial Lecture in honour of the woman who established the first psychological services for children in South Australia in the early 1920s. Through her ongoing 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. Areas of publication include chronic childhood conditions, vision care, aggression/bullying and school-based mental health initiatives. Her book Child Development: Theories and critical perspectives (Routledge) authored with Phillip Slee entered its 3rd edition in March 2026, uniquely covering both traditional and critical approaches. She and Professor Slee have also co-authored School bullying and marginalisation: Harmonising Paradigms (Springer, 2022) and co-edited Mental health and wellbeing through schools. Also published for Routledge is her book Clinical Psychology and Adolescent girls in a postfeminist era. A book for a general readership on social identity is also in press.