Rachel's work examines the intersections between psychology and animal lives, gender and feminism, the environment, and Indigenous perspectives, drawing on critical, sport, social, industrial-organisational, and clinical psychology perspectives, respectively. Her work seeks to challenge disciplinary boundaries and consider how language and social frameworks are implicated in academic discourse and in the power dynamics underpinning psychology as a discipline. Rachel’s work is informed by her experience living in regional Australia and her engagement with literary and performing arts, as well as community and social issues germane to regional contexts.  

Rachel's research addresses human-animal interaction, and animal-assisted therapy, as well as topics pertaining to gender, feminism, and gendered experiences of psychology, alongside her work on consent, coercive control, and domestic violence. She conducts research on sustainability and climate change in farming contexts, Indigenous experiences of mental health services, social media and phone-related behaviours such as phubbing, and has a research profile in the field of neurodiversity, specifically autism and ADHD. Her research is often situated in occupational contexts, with past and current projects focusing on veterinarians, paramedics, and psychologists, among other occupational contexts. Rachel conducts both qualitative and quantitative research and has significant experience with a range of research methodologies and methods, including advanced quantitative research methods and statistics.

Rachel is a member of the University of Queensland Animal-Assisted Interventions Alliance, and an appointed board member of the ATL Animal-Assisted Therapy Committee. She works and consults with a number of professional organisations and local government bodies, including the Grains Research Development Corporation, in her work on animal assisted therapy, sustainability in farming, and domestic violence.

Rachel has extensive teaching experience at undergraduate and postgraduate level, having taught a broad range of subjects across a range of subject levels. These subjects include methods of psychological inquiry, research methods and statistics in psychology, advanced research methods and statistics in psychology, psychological testing, the psychology of learning, foundations of psychology for health and human services, cognition, industrial-organisational psychology, ethics in research, critical thinking and reasoning, and stress, trauma, and coping. Rachel has also given a number of guest lectures on topics pertaining to developmental and social psychology, and has coordinated the School of Psychology Honours Program at Charles Sturt University. She has significant pedagogical expertise in subject development as well as delivery, having developed several new university subjects, including PSY115 An Introduction to Research, Ethics, and Reasoning.