Mary Butler is a Professor of Occupational Therapy whose work brings together philosophy, design thinking, the humanities, and therapeutic communication to deepen how we understand occupation, care, and human flourishing. Her teaching and research focus on the everyday practices through which people seek meaning, justice, and connection — what she refers to as well-doing.
She is currently pioneering a Humanities for Health initiative within allied health education, integrating film and book clubs, meditation groups, and storytelling as co-curricular spaces for student reflection and personal growth. Mary’s curriculum design is known for its creative use of metaphor, narrative, and co-creation with people who have lived... Read more
About me
Mary Butler is a Professor of Occupational Therapy whose work brings together philosophy, design thinking, the humanities, and therapeutic communication to deepen how we understand occupation, care, and human flourishing. Her teaching and research focus on the everyday practices through which people seek meaning, justice, and connection — what she refers to as well-doing.
She is currently pioneering a Humanities for Health initiative within allied health education, integrating film and book clubs, meditation groups, and storytelling as co-curricular spaces for student reflection and personal growth. Mary’s curriculum design is known for its creative use of metaphor, narrative, and co-creation with people who have lived experience - she has been a pioneer in applying human-in-the-loop AI pedagogies to support heutagogical (self-determined) learning models. Her students are encouraged to engage in genuine inquiry, using their own experiences as a valid and rigorous foundation for scholarly insight.
Mary’s PhD explored care ethics in the context of severe brain injury, and her research now spans topics including family-centred practice, the mobility paradigm, and design-based innovation in health. She led the award-winning Vision 2020 project, recognised by the National Design Institute of New Zealand, and received the Frances Rutherford Award in 2021 for her contributions to raising the profile of occupational therapy in the wider community.
She has supervised a wide range of higher degree research projects — in areas such as palliative care, poverty, neurological vision impairment, and animal-assisted therapy — always with an eye toward inclusion, ethical practice, and leadership development.
Mary’s work is grounded in a deep belief that education, like occupation itself, is a moral and creative act — capable of shaping not only professional identity, but also the world we inhabit together.
About me
OTNZ-WNA The New Zealand Occupational Therapy Association
OTA Occupational Therapy Australia Association
ANZAHPE Australia New Zealand Association for Health Professional Educators
NZOT Occupational Therapy registration NZ
AHPRA Australian registered health professional
WFOT World Federation of Occupational Therapy
About me
Doctor of Philosophy University of Otago
Master of Arts University of Otago
Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education Otago Polytechnic
Research
Excludes commercial-in-confidence projects.
Various Scholarship, Various, 01/01/2025 - 31/12/2026
Movable Objects in Playgrounds (MOPs): This is a collaboration with the Match Studio at UniSA
The idea behind this project is to produce a range of loose equipment/movable objects and to explore the efficacy and acceptability of this equipment in enabling play/activity among adolescents during recess. We will want to understand the sustainability of the concept, since there are many barriers to integrating loose equipment into the playground.
School recess is a unique context that plays an important role in a child’s growth and development. It provides children and adolescents with up to 390 opportunities per school year to engage in freely chosen leisure activities with their peers, which are relatively free from adult control. Furthermore, school recess has numerous academic, physical, cognitive, social, and emotional benefits. For example, children learn key social skills such as sharing, cooperating, taking turns, negotiating, conflict management, and problem solving. There are opportunities to practice motor skills, gain confidence in their movements, and to be physically active. Benefits to classroom behavior have also been reported, with children more attentive and productive following recess. Children who have adequate exposure to outside light have less tendency towards short sightedness (myopia) which is another quiet epidemic among young people spending more time indoors. Young people aged 11-18 would be the primary benefactors of this work. It may extend into primary schools; we are likely to have a particular interest in how accessible this will be to children with disability.
Ensuring that recess interventions are sustained over time is often challenging. While teachers may acknowledge the importance of intervention outcomes, competing priorities and time limitations can take precedence. Interventions utilizing physical environmental variables (such as loose equipment) have been little researched but seem to have a significant impact on playfulness and activity levels in the playground. In this project we want to map out an intervention using movable objects in the playground, particularly for adolescents. We want to explore sustainability and effectiveness in the widest sense of the word, particularly exploring recycled equipment. Physical activity levels decline as children progress towards adolescence, which is mirrored in the recess period. It is also a time when adolescents are less likely to spend time outside, which has impact on their vision. However, recess interventions targeting adolescents are few and far between, which may reflect the limited or non-existent time allocated to recess in some countries. Based on the limited research to date, it appears that loose equipment has the potential to increase physical activity in these settings. In this commercialization project we want to query the impact of integrating loose equipment into school playgrounds and to examine the sustainability question as part of the commercialization journey
Research
Research outputs for the last seven years are shown below. Some long-standing staff members may have older outputs included. To see earlier years visit ORCID, ResearcherID or Scopus
Open access indicates that an output is open access.
Year | Output |
---|---|
2025 |
Open access
|
2023 |
3
|
2022 |
Open access
|
2022 |
Open access
|
2022 |
Open access
|
2021 |
1
1
1
|
2021 |
2
2
|
2020 |
Open access
3
3
6
|
2020 |
9
9
2
|
2020 |
Open access
|
2020 |
Open access
|
2020 |
Open access
|
2019 |
|
2019 |
Open access
|
2019 |
6
6
|
2019 |
Open access
|
2019 |
4
3
5
|
2019 |
Open access
4
5
|
2018 |
Open access
|
2018 |
|
2017 |
Open access
|
2017 |
|
2017 |
Open access
|
2017 |
Open access
|
2017 |
Open access
|
2016 |
6
|
2016 |
|
2016 |
9
7
4
|
2016 |
6
5
|
2015 |
5
5
2
|
External engagement & recognition
Organisation | Country |
---|---|
Auckland University of Technology | NEW ZEALAND |
Griffith University | AUSTRALIA |
Hawke’s Bay Hospital | NEW ZEALAND |
International College of Management Sydney | AUSTRALIA |
Koninklijke Visio | NETHERLANDS |
OT Practice | UNITED KINGDOM |
Otago Polytechnic | NEW ZEALAND |
Private Individual | UNITED KINGDOM |
South Australian Museum | AUSTRALIA |
Tahuna Normal Intermediate School | NEW ZEALAND |
Taranaki Base Hospital | NEW ZEALAND |
Taranaki Diocesan School | NEW ZEALAND |
Torrens University Australia | AUSTRALIA |
UNITEC Institute of Technology | NEW ZEALAND |
University College Cork | IRELAND |
University of Adelaide | AUSTRALIA |
University of Auckland | NEW ZEALAND |
University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute | UNITED STATES |
University of Otago | NEW ZEALAND |
University of South Australia | AUSTRALIA |
University of Waikato | NEW ZEALAND |
External engagement & recognition
Engagement/recognition | Year |
---|---|
Finalist, Value of Design AwardDesign Institute of New Zealand |
2021 |
Francis Rutherford Lecture AwardOccupational Therapy New Zealand/Whakaora Ngangahau Aotearoa Conference |
2021 |
Award for Research and EnterpriseOtago Polytechnic, New Zealand |
2017 |
Teaching & student supervision