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Associate Professor Sarah Bennett is the Program Director, Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Queensland. Her research interests include evidence-based policing and practice, procedural justice and legitimacy, experimental criminology, and organisational practice. These interests are interwoven within three research aims to 1) advance the role of police and police training in improving outcomes for survivors, offenders and communities, 2) innovate and apply rigorous research methods in real world settings to inform policy and practice and 3) advance organisational facilitators and theories for effective practice. Sarah has significant and internationally unique expertise in delivering complex research projects with translational benefits to improve policing practice in the UK and Australia. Sarah is a Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology (AEC). Sarah is invested in strong partnerships to facilitate measurable and meaningful research outcomes.

As/Prof Kathy Ellem is Head of Discipline (Social Work and Counselling) in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work at The University of Queensland, Australia. Her research expertise includes participatory research methodologies (including narrative, digital and arts-based research) with people with impaired cognitive capacity; the intersectionality of disability and the criminal legal system; disability workforce development; family-centred practice and capacity building of families who have a loved one with a disability; self-advocacy for people with an intellectual disability; families who have been forced to relinquish care of their child with a disability; and parents with an intellectual disabilitiy and their experiences of the child protection system.

Kathy has previously practiced as a social worker in both government and non-government sectors, working with children, young people and their families in disability and child protection services. As a social worker, she has been actively involved in casework; case management; behavioural intervention; group work; community development; and individual, citizen and systems advocacy. She has taken on family leadership roles in the disability sector.

Kathy's academic focus is on improving the lives of people with disabilities. She is a board member of the Australasian Society for Intellectual Disability, and Deputy Chair of the University fo Queensland's Disability Inclusion Group.

Kathy currently leads the Honours research course for the Bachelor of Social Work (Hons) and supervises research higher degree students in the fields of disability, mental health and health. Her work focuses on how both teaching and research can influence positive change in social work practice and in the lives of people who experience significant social disadvantage.

Carmel Fleming is a mental health professional with the Queensland Eating Disorder Service (QuEDS) and conjoint Clinical Lecturer with Queensland Health and the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work at the University of Queensland where she teaches in Advanced Practice in Health. At QuEDS Carmel is senior social worker, clinical educator, and clinical supervisor providing consultation and service development across Queensland as well as coordination of QuEDS family and carer services. Prior to this she developed and led the QuEDS statewide education and training program for ten years. Carmel has specialised in mental health and eating disorders since 1992 with a focus on low intensity and specialist interventions such as self help and cognitive behavioural programs as well as family work. Carmel completed her PhD into the effectiveness of services for families of adults affected by eating disorders and maintains a special interest in the clinical support and supervision of other health professionals.

Professor Karen Healy AM is Head of the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work at the University of Queensland. A leading social work academic, she is deeply committed to health equity, family inclusion, and social justice. Her research focuses on community-based integrated care for people facing adversity, with a particular emphasis on maternity, mental health, and housing insecurity.

She has established and leads a program of research partnerships with government, non-government and lived-experience organisations, underpinning a collaborative program of work with strong policy and practice impact. She has led award-winning initiatives such as Young Mothers for Young Women, a midwifery–social work–peer support program for young parents. She has also contributed to the development of integrated care models for people experiencing homelessness, combining physical, mental, and maternal health services. She is the author of several influential books on social work theory, family inclusion, and health equity.

Professor Healy chairs Clinical Care and Governance for Anglicare Southern Queensland, which provides health and community services across the life course.

In 2016, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her contribution to social work in child protection, higher education, and research. In September 2018, she was appointed a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK).

Dr. Dorothee Hölscher is a social work lecturer in the School of Nursing, Midwifery & Social Work at The University of Queensland and a research associate with the Department of Social Work & Criminology at the University of Pretoria. Previously, she worked at Griffith University in Australia and the Universities of KwaZulu Natal, and the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

Dorothee began her social work education in Germany, followed by the completion of a Master of Social Science (cum laude) and a Ph.D. (by publication) in South Africa. Her practice experience comprises social work with refugees and other cross-border migrants, community development, and child protection.

Dorothee’s research areas are applied ethics (with a focus on justice), anti-oppressive social work theory and practice, and social work with migrants and culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Her research skill set comprises a wide range of qualitative and post-qualitative methodologies. To date, she published a total of 40 books and edited collections, book chapters, and scholarly articles; serves as a reviewer for eight local and international journals and presents regularly at local and international conferences.

A co-founder and a longstanding executive member of the Association of Schools of Social Work in Africa (ASSWA), Dorothee currently serves on the editorial board of the journal, Ethics & Social Welfare (ESW), and has recently completed - with Profs Richard Hugman from the University of New South Wales and Donna McAuliffe from Griffith University - an edited volume on social work theories and ethics with Springer Nature (June 2023).

Dr Martin O’Flahertyis a research fellow in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course located in the Institute for Social Science Research. Martin has made important contributions to the evaluation of nationally significant social policy, often working with the Department of Social Services. Notable highlights include designing the impact evaluation for the $90 million Try, Test, and Learn Fund and leading the evaluation of the Building Capacity in Australia’s Parents trial and the National Community Awareness Raising initiative. He is the quantitative lead for recently announced Community Refugee Integration and Sponsorship Pilot, funded by the Department of Home Affairs, which is investigating the feasibility of alternative settlement pathways for unlinked humanitarian migrants.

Martin’s broader research centres on the intersection of family, health, and disadvantage over the life course, using advanced quantitative methods to unlock causal and longitudinal perspectives on important social problems. Recent work has investigated patterns and determinants of children’s and adolescents’ time-use, including for adolescents with disability and LGBTQ adolescents. He has also led research using state-of-the-art machine learning methodology to study heterogeneous effects of teenage motherhood on later life mental health. Martin’s current research is primarily focussed on understanding the nature, causes of, and solutions to, poverty and financial insecurity among children with disabilities and their families. His work has appeared in leading international journals including Demography, Child Development, and The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health among others.

Cameron is an Australian Research Council Industry Fellow in partnership with Micah Projects.

Cameron’s research spans three linked areas of society. The first theme examines social problems. Cameron is interested in how social problems are framed, experienced, and contribute to the alienation of people affected and social dislocation. Cameron’s second theme of enquiry engages the myriad things society does about social problems. He is interested in the link between the framing and experience of social problems and the funded and practice solutions delivered. This includes both formal human services and voluntary and ground up community actions. The third theme of Cameron’s research seeks to uncover and extend empirical, theoretical, and ethical ideas for what a society that ends and prevents social problems would look like. This body of work is interested in not only how competing ideas for social cohesion can co-exist, but also how people holding competing ideas can come together to progress social cohesion through a diversity of disagreement.

In his first book, The Homeless Person in Contemporary Society, Cameron sought to highlight how the representation of people who are homeless as distinct informs a policy and practice agenda that he characterised as a poverty of ambition. Cameron's second book with Andrew Clarke and Francisco (Paco) Perales, Charity and Poverty in Advanced Welfare States, takes on the question how can we be just by soothing the consequences of poverty without addressing the causes of poverty.

Cameron's most recent book published by Polity Press, Homelessness, demonstrates that homelessness is a punishing, predictable, yet solvable social problem.https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=9781509554492

Associate Professor Maree Petersen is a social work academic in the School of Nursing, Midwifery, and Social Work. Maree's program of research centres on older people experiencing disadvantage. Underpinning her research is the recognition of the rights of older people to participate in healthy ageing, and as such be housed well with access to community aged care services. Her work incorporates a number of themes but the central aim is to use research to improve the delivery of health and welfare services in the context of elder abuse, housing, homelessness with particular emphasis on the intersection of the policy areas of housing, health and income security necessary for ensuring wellbeing as people as they age. A key focus is understanding how economic abuse across the life course results in housing precarity for women in later life. The results from her research have implications for how we think about older people without access to their rights, and living in poverty and at risk of homelessness with restricted access to community aged care and support.

Maree has taken on a leadership role with the National Older Women's Housing and Homelessness Working Group advocating for policy change and more effective strategies to enable older women to access affordable, safe, secure and appropriate housing. Maree engages in evaluation of housing and homelessness programs within the community sector, and reviews of retirement village legislation.

Maree's teaching draws on her research and practice experience to teach undergraduate courses that explain and critique welfare structures in Australia, and foundational practice courses in health and ageing. Maree supervises higher degree students in the fields of elder abuse, loneliness amongst older migrants, and vulnerable people experience of aged care reforms. She has supervised in areas of housing and homelessness.

Associate Professor Lynda Shevellar has over 20 years in tertiary education. She joined The University of Queensland in 2009. Based in the School of Social Science, Lynda is the winner of an Australian Award for University Teaching Excellence (AAUT) in Society and Culture (2025). Previously she has won an early career award for teaching excellence in 2011, a University of Queensland Award for Teaching Excellence in 2019, and an Australian Award for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2019). She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, the Principal Practitioner - Participation and Engagement (Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation), and is one of the Deputy Associate Deans (Academic) - Students, for the HASS Faculty. Lynda has previously held roles in government and the community sector and is influenced by over thirty years of experience in community development, the disability sector, mental health, education, and psychology.

Lynda's research explores three closely aligned agendas: understanding the experience of people who live with heightened vulnerability; developing the awareness, agency and capacity of communities to respond to social disadvantage and inequality; and aligning community development theory and education to inform practice in working alongside people who live with heightened vulnerability. Lynda has a particular interest in the development of inclusive learning communities, through creative teaching practices, participative research strategies, and engaged citizenship.

Lynda currently coordinates the courses SOSC2288: Community Development - Local and International Practice; and SOCY1070: Inequality, Society and the Self.

Associate Professor Jemma Venables is a social work academic and the Program Lead for the Master of Social Work (Qualifying) program. She teaches into the undergraduate and postgraduate social work programs. Jemma's interdisciplinary and industry-engaged programs of research is focused on transforming child and family welfare. Her work spans the continuum from early intervention through to her primary focus – young people’s transition from out-of-home care to adulthood. The research teams she leads and contributes to aim to build knowledge to inform more responsive policies and practices that enhance the wellbeing, connection and outcomes for marginalised and disadvantage children, young people and their families.

Emily is an experienced evaluator and policy analyst whose experience is designing, collecting and interpreting high quality evidence to improve outcomes for priority groups. She has deep, strategic knowledge of the Australian public sector, working alongside government agencies to design, implement and evaluate large, complex social policy initiatives.

Emily's motivated by helping her clients to use evaluation and research to understand the people they serve - conumers, service providers, Executive sponsors, advocacy groups - to deliver tailored programs and achieve better outcomes both for people and human service systems.

Her ability to build rapid rapport, synthesise complex information and balance perspectives means she is an in-demand strategic facilitator and trusted advisor to the executives of government agencies.

Her work creates impact because of her ability to connect information and people. She's great at taking complex information and making it simple and easy to action.