Dean, Education
College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
My work centres on familial and intimate relationships as lived experiences and as sites of policy intervention. Specifically, I use qualitative methods to analyze how people make sense of the joys and challenges of negotiating intimate relationships in the context of personal and social change.
My current research includes: an Australian Research Council Discovery Project on children’s understandings of ‘home’ when their parents separate/ divorce (with Professor Belinda Fehlberg [University of Melbourne] and Professor Bruce Smyth [ANU]); an Australian Research Council Discovery Project on supporting Australia's domestic and family violence workforce (with Flinders colleagues Professor Sarah Wendt and Dr Kate Seymour); an Australian Research Council Linkage Project with South Australia's Department for Child Protection, Anglicare SA and Life Without Barriers on applying the idea of home to improve the experiences and outcomes of young people in state (out-of-home) care (with Flinders colleagues Dr Kate Seymour, Professor Sarah Wendt, Dr Carmela Bastian and Dr Michelle Jones) and a Flinders University Innovation Partnership Seed Grant in collaboration with OARS Community Transitions, on accommodating domestic and family violence perpetrators as a strategy for change (with Flinders colleagues Dr Kate Seymour, Professor Sarah Wendt, Dr Carmela Bastian).
I have also published extensively in the area of housing and homelessness.
I am in the early stages of developing cross-national research on how women imagine their maternal futures in the context of climate crisis, working with Associate Professor Debra King [Flinders], Dr Carla Pascoe Leahy [University of Melbourne] and Professor Mary Holmes [University of Edinburgh].
Bachelor of Arts (Sociology), The University of Queensland
Honours, First Class (Sociology), The University of Tasmania
PhD (Sociology), The University of Queensland
Dean, Education - College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Co-Convenor, Families and Relationships theme, The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) (with Dr Ashley Barnwell).