Freshwater was born in a mining family in Nottingham in August 1962, with two younger brothers.[2] She left school at the age of 15 because her parents became unwell. Freshwater trained as a nurse and was the first member of her family to attend university.[3] Her doctoral research investigated the impact of transformative learning on nursing students for which she was awarded a PhD by the University of Nottingham in 1998.[4][5]
In 2014 Freshwater moved to Australia.[3] Freshwater joined the University of Western Australia as Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor in 2016.[9] In 2017 she was made the Vice Chancellor, and led the first Inclusion and Division strategy.[10] She was the first woman to be made Chair of the Group of Eight in 2018.[3] She also led the Matariki network of universities. At the University of Western Australia Freshwater established the Public Policy Institute, which translates research into real-world solutions for the Indo-Pacific region.[11]
In 2019 Freshwater became the first woman to be appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of Auckland whilst remaining a professor of mental health at the University of Leeds.[12] During her appointment at the University of Auckland, there has been substantial increase of the QS ranking in the overall university category and in the new sustainability category.[13][14][15][16] Further, in 2024, the University of Auckland reached the highest ranking since 2013 in the QS ranking being the 65th in the world.[17] She has been invited as a keynote speaker in several international ranking event hosted by the Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS).[18][19][20]
Publications
Freshwater has authored and co-authored over 100 peer reviewed papers[21] and she is among the top 2% cited scientists according to the 2023 Stanford/Elsevier ranking.[22] Some of her selected works are:
Critical reflection for nursing and the helping professions : a user's guide[23]
^Dawn Freshwater publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
^Ioannidis, John P. A. (4 October 2023). "Bibliometrics". October 2023 data-update for "Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators". Vol. 6. Elsevier Data Repository. doi:10.17632/btchxktzyw.6.
^Rolfe, Gary. (2001). Critical reflection for nursing and the helping professions : a user's guide. Freshwater, Dawn., Jasper, Melanie. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave. ISBN0333777956. OCLC46984997.
^Freshwater, Dawn (2002). Therapeutic Nursing. SAGE Publishing. ISBN0761970649.
