Email this link

Staff Research Interests

International Studies

A/Prof Katharine Gelber
Human rights, with a special interest in free speech and hate speech. Current recipient of an ARC Discovery Grant for a project entitled "Securing Freedom: Political Speech in Australia" (DP0663077).

Dr Helen Pringle
My main research interests are in political theory (with a focus on 17th and 19th centuries), and in the area of human rights and justice. I am working on a project concerning the place of pornography within considerations of free speech, entitled Practising Pornography. I am also involved in an international research project on ethnography and sexual slavery in early colonial Queensland.

Dr Mark Rolfe
Dr Rolfe lectures & researches in the areas of Australian politics, propaganda & public diplomacy, rhetoric, political satire, Americanisation, the internet & politics, and prime ministers.

Dr Elizabeth Thurbon
Elizabeth specializes in the international political economy of trade and industrial strategy in East Asia, Australia and the US. She recently completed a joint ARC Discovery Grant project examining the impact of globalisation on government-business relations in a variety of national settings.

Politics and International Relations

Dr Anthony John Billingsley
Anthony’s main focus is on the Middle East. His specialist interests include political succession in the Arab world, the role of constitutions and law in the region and the politics of the Gulf, Syria and Egypt. He also is interested in international legal issues such as the use of force and humanitarian intervention and in the impact of US foreign policy, especially on the Middle East.

Anthony is currently engaged in research relating to Arab constitutions, succession in Arab republics and to the use of force.

Prof Gavin Kitching
Professor Gavin Kitching is interested in the later philosophy of Wittgenstein and its implications for social science. He also has interests in globalisation, and in rural and agricultural development in the Third World.

Dr Geoffrey Brahm Levey
Geoffrey Brahm Levey's current research is in contemporary political theory, with special reference to multiculturalism, ethnicity, religion, nationalism, and citizenship. He also researches in the area of modern Jewish politics and society. He is presently engaged on a three-year ARC Discovery grant project, 'Autonomy, Liberalism and the Right to Culture' (DP0772343), and on an ARC-Academy of the Social Sciences Linkage project (LS0800003), 'Integration and Multiculturalism – a Harmonious Combination' (involving a national research team led by Prof. Michael Clyne and Dr James Jupp).

Dr Joanne Pemberton
Dr Jo-Anne Pemberton works on international relations theory, theories of war and peace, sovereignty, international institutions and law, and the theories of political language. Her book Global Metaphors: Modernity and the quest for one world. Dr Helen Pringle

My main research interests are in political theory (with a focus on 17th and 19th centuries), and in the area of human rights and justice. I am working on a project concerning the place of pornography within considerations of free speech, entitled Practising Pornography. I am also involved in an international research project on ethnography and sexual slavery in early colonial Queensland.

A/Prof Shirley Scott
Dr Shirley Scott has published in leading journals of both International Law and International Relations on the place of international law in world politics. She has worked collaboratively with scholars of both disciplines in Australia, North America and the United Kingdom and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of International Law and International Relations. Dr Scott is also the author of a leading textbook in the field: International Law in World Politics: an Introduction and its companion, International Law and Politics: Key Documents. She is currently working on projects on the `United States and International Law' and `international law and the use of force' and is a member of a Trans-Tasman research group on maritime security.

Prof Marc Williams
Marc Williams teaches international relations. His previous research and publications have covered topics such as the developing countries and international economic organizations; international trade and the environment; civil society and global governance; and the developing countries and world politics. His current research focuses on transnational civil society and the world trading system; agricultural negotiations and the developing countries; the politics of sustainable consumption, and the political economy of genetically modified food.

Social Science and Policy

Dr George Argyrous
Role of the state in the economy; technological change and social change; philosophy of science and economic thought.

Prof Janet Chan
JANET is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. Her research interests include criminal justice policy and practice, sociology of organisation and occupation, and the social organisation of creativity. Her early works involved empirical studies of police discretion with young offenders, the production of crime news in the media, and penal reform initiatives. She is internationally recognised for her contributions to policing research, especially her work on policing in a multicultural society, police culture, police training and socialisation (with Chris Devery and Sally Doran), police reform, the use of information technology in policing (with David Brereton), and the legal regulation of police discretion in juvenile justice (with Jenny Bargen). Her research with Michael Chesterman on managing the impact of media publicity on criminal jury trials has been influential in law reform and policy. More recently, she has established a major research program on creativity and innovation, which includes longitudinal studies of creative artists (with Neil Brown), research scientists and the collaboration between new media artists and computer scientists, as well as a project with the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia on social scientific explanations of creativity and innovation and their policy implications. She is currently President of the Academic Board and Professor of Social Science and Policy. Formerly a Research Associate at the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, she has held various positions in Australia, including Research Director of the NSW Judicial Commission, Director of the Sydney Institute of Criminology, and Head of UNSW School of School of Social Science and Policy. She has been research consultant to various organisations including: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, National Crime Authority, Australian Institute of Judicial Administration, and the Royal Commission into the NSW Police Service. She was part-time Commissioner of the NSW Law Reform Commission (2001-2005) and a member of the NSW Crime Prevention Council (2002-2005). She is an Associate Editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, and an Australian Reader of the Australian Research Council.

Prof Ralph Hall
Research design and methods in the social sciences; theory and practice of program evaluation; higher education issues including performance measurement, quality, student perceptions of their university experience, evaluation of teaching.>/p> A/Prof Michael Johnson

His research interests include the role of the public sector in the economy and the areas of infrastructure provision (water electricity and infrastructure policy), regulation as well as the area of public management and its reform. He is also interested in environmental management and development policy in the area of the role of 'not-for-profits' and human rights.

Dr Susan Keen
Susan Keen's research interests include the production of policy relevant knowledge and the relationship between knowledge and policy. She is currently researching aspects of the history of the social sciences in Australia from the perspective of a wide range of locations, including universities, statistical bureaux, research institutes and think tanks, and non-profit welfare organisations with research functions. She has a long-term interest in the relationship between the state and civil society, particularly through the study of non-profit organisations, and the various ways in which collective action takes place. This research includes the study of Australian social policy and the various organisational dimensions of its provision in Australian history.

Dr Alan Morris
Alan has done research on a range of social issues. More recently he has done research on inner-city transition in Sydney, work and disability, and pathways into and out of homelessness for older people. At present he is doing research on the impact of different housing tenures and housing policy on the life circumstances of older people.

A/Prof Rogelia Pe-Pua
Rogee's research interests include indigenous psychology, racism in Australia, multicultural attitudes in plural societies, migration policy issues, cross-cultural psychology, social and community issues, and youth issues. She has undertaken research on migration and return migration in Hawaii and the Philippines, labour migration in Spain and Italy, the character of Australian ethnic press, international students’ experiences, street-frequenting ethnic youth, refugee family settlement, Hong Kong immigrants in Australia, legal needs of NESBs, and an evaluation of a Juvenile Crime Prevention Strategy. She has also worked collaboratively with international researchers comparing ethnocultural youth identity and acculturation in 13 countries, and culture and trait links in four countries.

Mr Chris Walker
CHRIS teaches policy analysis, policy and organisations, and policy case studies. He has worked in various senior and middle level management and policy positions at the NSW Department of Health, the Roads and Traffic Authority and the Transport Safety and Reliability Regulator. Prior to joining the School, he was a member of the NSW Senior Executive Service working at the Cabinet Office. Chris has been on staff exchange with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Department of Health and worked on developing training material in public sector ethics for the Institute of Public Administration Australia. His research interests include intergovernmental relations, federalism, regulatory reform, public sector management and public sector reform. Of particular interest is the practice of separating policy from operations in government agencies and the consequences this presents for policy development and policy implementation.

Social Science and Policy Emeritus and Visiting Staff

Dr Geoffrey Fishburn
GEOFF retired (gladly) in 2002 from the School of Economics (UNSW) after three decades in which he taught courses in Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, International Trade, Economics of Information and Technology, Capital Theory, Mathematical Economics, Economic Methodology and Political Economy. His last position held in the School (1994-2001) was as Honours Director. His earlier service to the University was as a member of the University Council and President of the University Union. His current research interests are in the fields of classics, evolution of technology, history of economic thought, and the evolution of cooperation and altruism. In economics: pure theory of international trade; in political economy: evolution of trust and cooperation; in the history of economic thought: sundry, including Keynes, early professionalisation of economics, Darwinian impacts on economics and political economy, and models of cooperation; in Classics: economic aspects of Greece and Rome. His publications have been in the fields of public finance, theory of international economics, history of economic thought, and history of biological thought.

Dr Flavio Romano
FLAVIO is a senior economist with the Australian Treasury. His principal responsibility is developing policies for microeconomic, infrastructure and competition reforms that maximise efficiencies and optimise welfare. His research interests and expertise are in public finance, public policy and economic growth, and especially the role that policy instruments such as public finance, tax policy and corporate regulation have on the stimulation of innovation and economic growth. He has published on public policy and innovation, the effect of corporate regulation on capital markets, Australian environmental policy and economic growth and a book-length study of economic policies in the US and the UK. His current research is on the role of public policy in fostering innovation and economic growth.

Criminology

Dr Jane Bolitho
Jane teaches primarily on the Criminology program and also contributes to the policy and research methods components of the Bachelor of Social Science. She has previously worked in the Crime Prevention Division of NSW Attorney General’s Department in a position focusing on the evaluation of court based diversionary programs and is also a registered psychologist. Recent research has focused on youth justice issues and programs in NSW and restorative justice approaches including a large scale project on the NSW Youth Justice Conferencing program.

Dr Leanne Weber
Discretionary decision making; policing of migration; transnational policing; global governance; minority rights

Criminology Emeritus and Visiting Staff

Dr Donald Weatherburn
DON has been in his current position as Director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in Sydney since 1988. He has published on a wide range of topics, including public perceptions of crime, criminal justice administration, child neglect and juvenile delinquency, unemployment and crime, drug law enforcement policy and crime prevention. His latest book Delinquent-Prone Communities (co-authored by Bronwyn Lind) was published in 2000. His current research interests include performance measurement in drug law enforcement, the impact of mandatory minimum penalties on judicial sentencing decisions, and the influence of cannabis use on driver performance.

Social Work

Dr Jan Breckenridge
I have worked, taught and researched in the areas of trauma, domestic and sexual violence, gender issues and child abuse for twenty-five years. My research provides a focus for my commitment to these areas and I have consistently received research funding, presented my research at National and International conferences, and published my work in these specified and related areas. I have also developed and regularly taught specialist practice electives in the UNSW undergraduate BSW program in the areas of trauma and sexual and domestic violence, which include research-informed components on therapeutic and community responses to both adults and children. I have a commitment to action and other participatory research projects.

A/Prof Elizabeth Fernandez
My research focuses on early intervention, child protection and foster care including child protection decision-making, preventative family based interventions and outcomes of foster care. Field based learning in higher education is a further area of research interest

Child protection; foster care; children’s rights; field-based learning in social work; cross- cultural studies.

A/Prof Carmel Flaskas
Family therapy theory and practice; clinical issues in social work; theory of knowledge.

Ms Karen Heycox
Karen has been researching and publishing, with colleagues from UNSW and other universities, on social work practicum particularly the area of assessment in the practicum, and more recently work based practicum in social work, with comparisons with New Zealand and other parts of the world. Her other research interests have included addressing ageism in social work students and in this area she has been researching and publishing with a colleague on reflective practice with older people. She and her colleague have now obtained a contract for an Australian book on reflective practice with older people. While these are her two main research areas she has at times also researched and published in areas such as funeral rituals, older care leavers, women and social work, and issues based learning in social work. She is a coeditor of the journal Women in Welfare Education.

Dr Lesley Hughes
Lesley’s research interests include the history of social work practice; religion, spirituality and social work; women and social work; social work education (particularly practicum education) and young people’s knowledge and awareness of HIV risk factors. The latter work has been in conjunction with colleagues at the University of Tennessee. In 2003 she completed a PhD on Catholic sisters and social welfare in late nineteenth century Sydney and is currently working on several recent social work history projects. These include the experiences of Catholic sisters in social care work in the latter part of the twentieth century. Other proposed projects include a case study of the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of voluntary sector social work practice in Sydney post 1945 and an oral history of retired social workers. With colleagues at UNSW and in the local professional community she has published research on the assessment of student performance in practicum. She is interested in the role of faith-based services in the re-settlement of refugees and is hoping to undertake research in this are with colleagues from the Centre for Refugee Research, UNSW. She is also the Director of the MacKillop Rural Community Services (a work of the Sisters of st Joseph, NSW Province).

Prof Richard Hugman
Richard Hugman is a qualified social worker who spent over a decade in direct practice. His current research includes developing new approaches in ethics for the caring professions; also the application of new ethical theory to research undertaken with refugees (in conjunction with the Centre for Refugee Research). Richard is currently working with UNICEF Vietnam to advise the Vietnam Government on the development of professional social work. He is currently the ethics commissioner of the International Federation of Social Workers and he was a member of the ‘expert panel’ which drafted the current international statement on ethics for social work. Previously he has undertaken various research projects concerning late life, community and social welfare, mental health, the organization of social services. Richard is an international editorial advisor to Journal of Interprofessional Care, Social Work Education, Ethics & Social Welfare and Practice. He is a Fellow of the Australian Association of Gerontology.

Ms Kerrie James
Kerrie teaches counselling and group work in social work programs. Prior to joining the University in 2005, Kerrie was the the Clinical Director at Relationships Australia NSW where she taught in the Masters of Couple and Family Therapy (in partnership with the School of Social Work); taught and supervised counselling staff and provided clinical supervision to a number of mental health and child protection teams in NSW. Kerrie's research interests have included men's experience of their own domestic violence for which she received an ARC Industry Award in 1996; men's issues in families; attachment theory; gender issues in couple relationships; issues of responsibility and forgiveness in families. In 1999, Kerrie received the Award for Distinguished Contribution to Family Therapy in Australia. Kerrie is currently involved with the Centre for Refugee Research in developing psycho-social approaches to assist refugees who have experienced trauma and torture.

A/Prof Helen Meekosha
Helen Meekosha’s research interests cross boundaries of race, ethnicity, disability, gender and class. In 1996 she was instrumental in establishing The Social Relations of Disability Research Network, a group of interdisciplinary scholars interested in Disability Studies. She was also a founding member of the Disability Studies and Research Institute (DSaRI) in 2002. Helen's research addresses questions of citizenship, human rights, social movements, media and the body, communications and multiculturalism.

Her current research explores new critical directions in disability studies through an engagement with debates on intersectionality and critical realism. Helen has undertaken collaborative research with colleagues in Japan, the US, UK and Canada. In 2005 she was the Noted Scholar in feminist disability studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Dr Michael Wearing
Social inequality; comparative social policy, research methodology; social wage; mental health and professional practice; public opinion and the welfare state.

Research Interests:
Sociology of Health and Illness; Comparative Social Policy; Organizational Learning, Theory and Practice; Public Policy Analysis and Identity Politics; Mental Health; Crime and Youth.

Current Research:
Risk, Social Policy and Human Services; Organisations, Management and Practice of Health and Human Services Masculinity and Violence. Child Abuse Prevention

Sociology and Anthropology

Prof Ann Game
ANN currently teaches courses on relationships, theories of self, health and healing. Working collaboratively with Professor Andrew Metcalfe, she has recently done research on the first year student's experience of university, on the teacher-student relation, on the creative moments of everyday life and on the nature of subjectivity. She is interested in the role of the sacred in everyday life. She is currently working on an ARC-funded project on the logic of the gift in charitable relations.

A/Prof Vicki Kirby
Interests: Poststructuralism, feminist theory, post-humanism, technology and science studies.

Recent Profile: Chief Investigator of an ARC Discovery Project Grant, “The Life of Language and the Language of Life” (2006-2009) $120,000; Conference Convenor - “The Two Cultures: Reconsidering the Division Between the Sciences and the Humanities” (July 2005), papers appeared in a Guest Edited Special Issue of Australian Feminist Studies in 2008; Visiting Professor in Theory/Praxis - India Centre for Contemporary Theory National Summer School, Berhampur University June 2007.

I am a Founding Member of the Advisory Board Digital Semiotics Encyclopedia and a Member of the Editorial Board, Australian Feminist Studies.

Dr Grant McCall
Current research examines globalisation, memory and colonialism as is to be a book called Matamu‘a, the word the Rapanui use to mean history. The theoretical innovation in Matamu‘a is to link the global with the local using time structuration as the core device.

Future plans include the making of short ethnographic films for research and teaching as lived experience and an enquiry into the Pacific Islands as an “Oceanic Empire”.

For some time, Grant convened an innovative fieldwork course where students lived the daily lives of Pacific Island villages in Fiji, the Solomons, Samoa, Tonga, and New Caledonia.

As well as the focus on the region, he is interested in the particular features that mark island societies, proposing the concept of “Nissology”, the study of islands on their own terms, as a way of focussing such research.

Of late, he has started to make short ethnographic films, beginning with Australian topics and most recently “Churches of ‘Eua”, film in Tonga in 2007 and available for viewing at the Royal Anthropological Institute’s 11th International Festival of Ethnographic film in 2009.

Grant has been foundation convener and, now, Vice-President of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Pacific Studies (AAAPS) as well as being President of the International Small Island Studies Association (ISISA). Complimenting his research, he also is on editorial and advisory boards of journals and Non-Government Organisations as well as a frequent contributor to professional publications.
In recognition of his contributions to the communities with he has been working, Grant was awarded Honorary Citizenship on Jeju Island, Korea, and honourary membership of Te Mau Hatu, the Rapanui Elders Council.

From 1987 to 2003, Grant was foundation Director of the Centre for South Pacific Studies at UNSW and, from 2004 to 2008, Director of the South Pacific Resource Centre. Both these institutions sponsored conferences, produced a Newsletter and monograph series, as well as working with government and non-government organisations, Australian as well as overseas, for the promotion of knowledge and well-being of the peoples of the Pacific islands.

In addition to a long (since 1976) association with UNSW, Grant has taught at the universities of Copenhagen and the South Pacific as well as having visiting fellowship at the University College, London, and the universities of Chile, Cambridge, Hawai‘i, Provence, Jeju and Valparaíso. Grant has been an invited keynote speaker at conferences in China, Fiji, New Caledonia, France, Japan and Spain.

Prof Andrew Metcalfe
ANDREW currently teaches courses on relationships, theories of self, health and healing. Working collaboratively with Professor Ann Game, he has recently done research on the first year student's experience of university, on the teacher-student relation, on the creative moments of everyday life and on the nature of subjectivity. He is interested in the role of the sacred in everyday life. He is currently working on an ARC-funded project on the logic of the gift in charitable relations.

Dr Ursula Rao
Ursula Rao was trained as anthropologist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Her regional interest is India. She has worked on contemporary urban Hinduism and has published extensively on ritual as performance. Her second area of research focuses on journalistic practices. The work analyses how changing approaches to news making – among English and Hindi-language journalists – impact on post-liberalized Indian society. Currently Ursula Rao is designing a new project that will re-visit theories of space and place in the context of research on the extremely-poor in the mega cities.

Dr Claudia Tazreiter
Claudia Tazreiter works in the area of migration and human rights. Her research focuses on the new human rights discourses of human security, as well as post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation processes. She has worked on asylum policies of Western states, the role of non-governmental organizations in policy advocacy and the situation of women in post-conflict settings. She is also Co-editor of the Human Rights Defender published by the Australian Centre for Human Rights at UNSW.

Sociology and Anthropology Emeritus and Visiting Staff

Mrs Miroslava Crouch

E/Prof Clive Kessler
Concentrates his research on politics, religion, culture and social change in Malaysia and South East Asia generally; on historical sociology and the sociology of Islamic history and on the emergence of non-Western forms of modernity.

Mrs Maria Markus
Maria Markus concentrates her research and postgraduate supervision on social theory and political sociology, especially modern forms of power and democracy. Fluent and published in several European languages.

Dr Diana Olsberg
An economic sociologist whose research interests include ecomonic decision- making and the financial aspects of ageing. An expert on retirement income policies, pensions and superannuation, she is the Director of the UNSW Research Centre on.

Professor Michael Pusey
Michael is currently completing an ARC funded project on Political Communication and Media Regulation in Australia. Michael has spent many years investigating the origins and impacts of neo-liberal economic restructuring on quality of life in Australia. He is now especially interested in its impacts on the public sphere and on the press and broadcasting media. He is currently investigating contemporary changes in media ownership and regulation regimes and their effects on the ‘public sphere'. With another project he is examining the impacts of neo-liberalism on intergenerational, family and personal relations.

Quick Links