Dr Di Rayson came to theology after a varied career.

With a background in Public Health, she has worked in PNG, NT and NSW in community development, health promotion, and program delivery roles. She was the NT's tobacco control officer who developed legislation to limit smoking in public places and restrict sale of tobacco. In PNG she worked in Women and Their Children's Health (WATCH) projects, training village birth attendants. She was Director for Alcohol and Other Drugs and then Director for Crime Prevention in the NT government, and has run a consultancy in public policy, community engagement, and research.

As an academic, Di's research has centred on the life and work of German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) and especially its relevance to contemporary social issues. 

Her thesis, Bonhoeffer's Theology and Anthropogenic Climate Change: In Search of an Ecoethic  
interrogates the problem of climate change from a theological perspective. Bonhoeffer's Christological foundation provides an entry point for understanding the human place in the ecology. Following Bonhoeffer, it investigates an ecoethic commensurate to the problem, utilising notions of Stellvertretung and Sachgemäßheit: ethics based on standing in the place of the other, and appropriate to the context of the problem.

She works with churches and religious groups to help them understand that climate change is a religious problem requiring a religious response.

Di has worked on other contemporary issues such as war, rape culture, and theology and the arts. She has also published on Bonhoeffer and Gandhi and Bonhoeffer's political theology. She has been invited to speak in South Africa and Chicago, and is regularly interviewed on ABC radio for a theological and ethical perspective on social issues.

Di teaches into the Bachelor of Arts program at UON and elsewhere she lectures in theological studies. Some sample student feedback comments:

• Thank you for a wonderful course, I found it challenging and exceptionally interesting.
  
  
• I just wanted to say thank you for your guidance and help this semester. I feel completely overwhelmed by the responses and feedback I have been given for my assessment tasks. I have honestly never done as well in any assessment tasks at a tertiary level as I have in this subject.


• Di’s extensive knowledge, passion for the subject and expertise is clearly evident. The lecture materials were accessible and Di was easy to contact if advice was requested. She was also very quick to respond, which I appreciated.
  
  
• I very much appreciated Di’s encouraging emails at the start of each week.
  
  
• Di was amazing throughout the Unit. She responded so quickly to questions or comments on the discussion board. I really enjoyed that her passion comes through in her videos and even in the weekly updates. Her feedback on assessments was incredibly explicit and detailed - which I appreciated. 
  
  
• Thank you so much for the scaffold for approaching the assignment. I love your energy and passion for what you are teaching and the way you are supporting us. 

Di is an elected board member of the International Bonhoeffer Society - English Language Section and is Deputy Editor of The Bonhoeffer Legacy: An International Journal. She is Convenor of the Australian Bonhoeffer Conference.