Vale Professor Peter Creed – A Tribute

It is a sad honour to write this tribute for my friend and colleague of over thirty years Peter Creed, who died on 3 November 2025. Peter's career contributed to the life opportunities of so many people, during his pre-academic career and during his time in academia.

I first met Peter at the first national unemployment conference in 1994. Our collaboration led to co-editing of national unemployment conference proceedings in 1995 and 1997 and contributions to successive unemployment conferences (1999–2001). Together and with others, we contributed to 38 refereed publications and supported four doctoral journeys. Some of these joint works have amassed more than 300 citations. However our collaboration has been a minor part of his story – a part of which I know we were both very proud.

Peter was born in 1949 post war Australia in what was then a small country Queensland town, Warwick. He left school prior to completion of secondary qualifications and worked a number of unskilled jobs. In his late teens he attended a psychology lecture in Sydney – happenstance in action – and proceeded to return to Brisbane to complete high school qualifications so he could study psychology. He then completed undergraduate and Masters level qualifications in psychology at The University of Queensland (Master of Applied Psychology 1988). During these years Peter worked with the Commonwealth Department of Employment including time as a psychologist in the army reserve in Townsville. Peter completed his PhD at Queensland University of Technology in 1996, being the first doctoral graduate from the then School of Social Science. When he left the Department of Employment after 25 years Peter was the Chief Psychologist for the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) in Queensland.

Resonating with his own early life, Peter began professional life as a practitioner working with adolescents and adults who were displaced, confused about their life direction, or struggling with their careers. These interests carried over to career long research in the areas of career development, career progress, and career achievement. Peter's doctoral thesis comprised four studies reporting on outcomes for long-term unemployed individuals who attended occupational skills/personal development training courses in Australia. Levels of distress, depression, guilt, anger, helplessness, positive and negative affect, life satisfaction and self-esteem were used as measures of well-being. Employment value, employment expectations and employment commitment were used as measures of work attitude. Social support, financial strain, and use of community resources were used as measures of life situation. Other variables investigated were causal attribution, unemployment blame, levels of coping, self-efficacy, the personality variable of neuroticism, the psycho-social climate of the training course, and changes to occupational status. This doctoral work became the underpinning of Peter's ongoing academic research.

In December 1996 Peter joined Griffith University as a lecturer and was promoted to Professor from the beginning of 2006. He served as Head of School from 2004–2007 and formally retired 27 June 2025 (he worked part time for some years prior to this date). Peter's generosity and gentle guidance were evident in all his interactions – he supported former CES colleagues to pursue doctoral work, with a number joining the academic world. His collegial support is one of his defining legacies – he supervised (and published with) 27 PhD students – all of whom I am sure remember him with deep affection and thanks.

You always had a way of understanding the politics of life – chess games and all – and navigating them with grace, fairness, and wisdom. Where others stumbled, you stood calm, often with that signature dry wit that still makes me chuckle when I hear your voice in my head. Peter, please know that R and I have never, ever forgotten you. You left your mark on both our lives in the most meaningful of ways. (former doctoral student, written November 2025)

Peter's research work was supported by regular Australian Research Council Discovery and Linkage grants (he was Chief Investigator on 6 Discovery and 5 Linkage grants). These grants are prestigious and not easy to obtain. He also successfully obtained non-ARC grants, for example Australian Rotary and Queensland Department of Children's Services. From 2013–2015 he was a member of the ARC college of experts, a prestigious appointment.

Peter's contribution to career development research has a strong applied psychology focus. He published 267 refereed outputs: articles, conference papers, book chapters, books (and there are at least two publications which will be published posthumously). It is not possible to highlight all Peter's work, but the following will demonstrate both his commitment and contribution.

His work included a focus on unemployment (Creed & Bartrum, 2006; Creed & Moore, 2006 Creed & Reynolds, 2001; Creed et al., 2001, 2012); career development and disruption and career transition, with a particular focus on testing key variables such as career distress, career calling, career-related feedback (Hu, Creed et al., 2016; Hu, Hood et al., 2016a, 2016b), goal importance (Creed et al., 2017), vocational identity, goal congruence, career compromise, and goal orientation. In addition he was involved in testing variables key to a number of career theories, for example social cognitive career theory (Creed et al., 2002; 2004; 2006; Patton et al., 2003; Makransky et al., 2014; Rogers et al., 2008; Sawitri & Creed, 2017; Watson et al., 2003), and Super's career theory in particular the construct of career maturity (Creed & Patton, 2003a, 2003b; Patton & Creed, 2002, 2007c; Patton et al., 2002, 2004). Peter worked with colleagues to develop and validate a short form of the Australian version of Super's Career Development Inventory ([CDI-A SF] Creed & Patton, 2004; Patton et al., 2005) – many requests are still received each year for access to this measure. The importance of occupational aspirations, within the context of social cognitive theory was also the focus of work (Creed et al., 2007; Patton & Creed, 2007a, 2007b). Much of this research was completed with doctoral students, thereby contributing to the next generation of Australian career development scholars.

Peter had extensive collaborations with international colleagues, working with colleagues in China, UK, Indonesia and Denmark. Indeed, more than 50 percent of his publications were with international collaborators. Again, resonating with his background and commitment, Peter was particularly keen that his research would have practical applications – an example was ‘The Career Choice Cycle’ which assisted high school students with their career and life planning (Prideaux et al., 2002).

Since 2021, Peter had been rated in the top 2% of world scientists for the field of Psychology/Cognitive Sciences, based on a Stanford study of Scopus citations. In November 2025, Google Scholar listed 18 501 citations from his 267 career-wise publications.

Journal Editorship

Peter's commitment to career development in Australia was demonstrated in his undertaking the editorship of the Australian Journal of Career Development from 2016 to 2021, more remarkable as he was semi-retired for this time. He had always urged for an empirical basis to career development research in Australia (Prideaux & Creed, 2002) and demonstrated his commitment to that during his time as Editor. Noting that to develop and grow as an international journal, the AJCD needed to continue to broaden its scope and seek research-based papers that contributed to a better understanding of career development generally (Creed, 2016), Peter led a shift in AJCD policy which was promulgated on the AJCD website and used in marketing the journal (Creed, 2022).

AJCD accepts research of international interest that increases understanding of the career development of children, adolescents, and adults, wherever they might be: in school, college/university, business/work, family, and the community. Manuscripts come from a diverse field of research, including psychological science, education, human resource management, business studies, social work, sociology, and developmental science. The research accepted by AJCD informs researchers, practitioners, program developers, and policy makers and includes empirical studies, targeted reviews, papers that advance career development theory, scale development studies, cross-cultural research, intervention and counselling evaluations, and articles that contribute to policy development.

In February 2019, under Peter's leadership, the AJCD was listed on SCOPUS (first SCImago listing in 2020), the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed research output, which was a major step to attracting high-quality research submissions from the international research community.

Additional upgrades benefitted the journal during this period, much of this work driven by the support of the AJCD support staff at SAGE (the AJCD had joined the SAGE group of publications in 2013). First, at the end of 2015, the AJCD became a member of COPE (the Committee of Publication Ethics), which provided information to the editor, reviewers, and authors on publication conduct and misconduct (e.g., plagiarism, authorship conflicts). Members, for example, can obtain confidential advice on particular ethical issues, receive regular information on issues raised by other members, and attend free COPE conferences and learning events. Being a member of COPE confirmed to AJCD users that the journal adheres to a code of ethics in its dealings with others.

Second, in 2018, SAGE partnered with Publons, a third-party service provider that enables reviewers to obtain recognition for their reviewing. In the same year, the AJCD commenced collecting ORCID digital identifiers, which allowed authors to generate and share their research outputs efficiently, and are now required by many funding bodies, institutions, and publishing outlets.

Fourth, during 2019, SAGE took steps to have its publications, including the AJCD, available via open access (OA; via SAGE's Open Access Portal), which is now a reality giving authors the options of selecting OA, which gives unrestricted and free access to published papers, or non-open access, where access to publications is limited to journal subscribers, those with site licences (e.g., universities), or those who pay when viewing a publication.

Fifth, in 2020, and related to the introduced OA/non-OA choice options for authors, the AJCD moved from being a paper-based and online publication to being an online only journal, and sixth, at the end of 2020, the AJCD was included in SAGE Path (SAGE Publishing Article Transfer Hub), a free service to authors, which directs them to alternate journals when it has been decided that their original SAGE submission is not suitable for their first-choice journal selection.

As evident in these developments, Peter's leadership as Editor produced significant advances in the high quality status of the AJCD. He noted in a reflection on his time as Editor in 2022 (Creed, 2002) that during this period submissions had grown from ∼50 in 2015 to ∼150 in 2020, with the AJCD rejecting about 50% of all submissions in 2015 to rejecting 4–5 of every six submitted in 2020. While Peter credited much of this change to the developments at SAGE and to the drive by universities and research institutions to increase their research focus research output by their staff, it is clear that his work in increasing the standard required for a paper to be accepted was part of this change.

Conclusion

When Peter Creed died the professional field of career development lost a generous and caring intellectual contributor. His family, friends and colleagues, lost a warm, funny, loving, committed, generous and passionate friend, advocate and ally. I met with Peter shortly before his death – at that time we shared memories of the years of our friendship and collegial journey. We had undertaken significant research collaborations and together shared our pride at our joint contribution. Allowing ourselves a moment of introspection, we reminded each other that our legacy as academics has an enduring ripple effect – through the many colleagues and students we have supported and the enduring impact of our written words in the literature (and the uncounted hours in its compilation).

Thank you, Professor Peter Creed. It was an honour.