Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt

Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt is an internationally renowned scholar in Higher Education, Management Education, Organisation Development and Community Engagement. 
Until her full-time retirement in 2025, Ortrun was an Adjunct Professor at Griffith University, Australia (since 1997); Professor Extraordinaire at North-West University, South Africa (since 2015); Pro Chancellor, Global University for Lifelong Learning (GULL, since 2008), USA; and Honorary Citizen of the University of Innsbruck, Austria (since 2003). 

 

Following undergraduate and postgraduate studies in universities in Innsbruck (Austria) and Mainz and Kiel (Germany), she obtained four doctoral degrees while living in Australia: PhD in Literature and Translation Science (University of Queensland), PhD in Higher Education (Deakin University, Australia), Doctor of Letters (DLitt) in Management Education (International Management Centre, UK), and an Honorary Doctorate (DHon) in Professional Studies (GULL, USA). 

 

Ortrun has written many published works, including about 50 books, 80 book chapters, over 60 refereed journal articles, and more than 100 other articles, conference papers and reports. She has received numerous nationally and internationally funded grants for her projects on ways of improving learning, teaching, postgraduate supervision, research, and management/leadership in all the universities in Queensland and in all other Australian states. She has also held honorary research and teaching appointments at international institutions in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Fiji, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Germany, England, United States, Canada, Colombia and South Africa.

Ortrun conceptualised and initiated the First International Symposium on Action Research, held in Brisbane in 1989; organised the First World Congress on Action Learning, Action Research and Process Management (ALARPM) in Brisbane in 1990; and the following year launched the ALARPM Association. Now referred to as ALARA, the Association has links with like-minded organisations worldwide. Overall, Ortrun has built a very wide international network in and across academia, business, government, industry and communities.

After her retirement from Griffith University in 1996, Ortrun founded her own consultancy business called OZI (Ortrun Zuber International) specialising in projects and programs in Higher Education, Organisation and Community Development through work-based reflective practice and Participatory Action Learning and Action Research (PALAR). In 2016 she retired from full-time work at the age of 80. 

In 2015, Ortrun’s colleagues from across the world produced a Festschrift volume, Lifelong Action Learning and Research, as a tribute to her life and pioneering work. In June 2018 she was appointed an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AO) for ‘distinguished service to tertiary education in the field of action research and learning, as an academic, author and mentor, and to professional bodies’. In 2021 she was honoured as one of the “Griffith Greats” in the University’s Archives as the University’s first female academic appointed in 1974.