I am a researcher and education evaluator by trade and my passion is finding out stuff – not just any old information, but info that is useful to me.

Back in 1985 I was severely ill with chronic fatigue syndrome. According to the leading specialist in New Zealand I was his sickest patient at the time. I did find a way through to recovery and was better in 6 weeks.

From there I set out to get an education and along the way tried to come to an understanding of what had happened in those six weeks of healing. I did a theology degree and then moved on to do a PhD in General Practice at the University of Otago in New Zealand. My research for my PhD was a study of people who had a terminal condition and should have died but didn’t. That work is now being written up in an easy reading book and will be available for sale.  The  academic version has been published in Qualitative Health Research journal in 2008.

I am currently a Research Associate Professor with the Rural Clinical School that is part of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Western Australia. You can Google my academic name of Harriet Denz-Penhey for a list of my published papers.

I am still very much interested in health matters, but also about making money and hanging onto enough of it to be useful. Wisdom and happiness are two other areas which very much catch my attention.