Meet Dr Freya Macmillan

 I grew up in Scotland, and, as a high school student I had planned to study music at university. It was not until my final year of school that I became interested in health related topics covered in Biology and Physical Education. When I received my results (which were much better than I thought!), all of my teachers except for two advised me to study Medicine or Law. It was my family, my Physical Education teacher and Art teacher who encouraged me to follow my heart and pick a course that I was interested in, rather than the one that might result in the best salary. I studied Sports Biomedicine for my undergraduate degree and enjoyed this so much that I followed it with a PhD in Physical Activity for Health.  

A motivation to help others make better lifestyle choices has been the main driver of my career. Initially I was able to fulfil this through a career in university teaching and researching health promotion. As my career developed, I received large project funding and have used it to broaden my work to include community wide approaches to health promotion.

As a researcher and academic at Western Sydney University, I have the best of both worlds – to teach the future of Health Promotion and Allied Health, as well as undertaking Health Promotion research. Alignment of these aspects of my work fits perfectly with my career goal to make a difference to the health of whole communities.

I am a big advocate for extracurricular involvement whilst at University. As an undergraduate, I volunteered for every extracurricular opportunity that I could. This included running fitness testing for a Professional Scottish Football team and completing training to become a gym instructor. The skills that I picked up during these extracurricular activities have been invaluable in my research and teaching.

So here I am, in a career that I love, in a country that I love. Had you asked me 15 years ago what I would be doing and where I would be right now I would not have guessed in Australia as a Lecturer. My advice to all students is make sure you choose a degree that you will enjoy and be open to all opportunities that arise – you never know where you might end up!