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Lorraine Mazerolle is an Emeritus Professor at The University of Queensland, School of Social Science and an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow (2010–2015). She received the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in the General Division on Australia Day 2024 “for eminent service to education, to the social sciences as a criminologist and researcher, and to the development of innovative, evidence-based policing reforms.” Professor Mazerolle has published 5 books, 4 edited books, over 180 scientific journal articles and 46 book chapters. Her work has been cited more than 14,000 times. Her research interests are in experimental criminology, policing, drug law enforcement, regulatory crime control, and crime prevention. She has held many academic leadership roles including Co-Chair of the Crime and Justice Group (Campbell Collaboration), Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Experimental Criminology and Chair of the American Society of Criminology’s (ASC) Division of Experimental Criminology. She is an elected Fellow and past president of the Academy of Experimental Criminology (AEC), and an elected fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences Australia and the American Society of Criminology (ASC). Professor Mazerolle is the recipient of the ASC Division of Experimental Criminology Jerry Lee Lifetime Achievement Award (2019), Partners in Research Excellence Award The University of Queensland (2019), Distinguished Achievement Award of the Center for Evidence Based Crime Policy at George Mason University (2019), ASC Sellin-Glueck Award (2018), the ASC Division of Policing Distinguished Scholar Award (2016), the AEC Joan McCord Award (2013), and the ASC Division of International Criminology Freda Adler Distinguished Scholar Award (2010). She has won numerous US and Australian national competitive research grants on topics such as partnership policing, police engagement with high-risk people and disadvantaged communities, community regulation, problem-oriented policing, police technologies, civil remedies, street-level drug enforcement and policing public housing sites.

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

Dr Laura Simpson Reeves is a Research Fellow in the School of Nursing, Midwifery, and Social Work at The University of Queensland. She is a highly experienced qualitative social researcher with a strong background across the social sciences and humanities. Her program of research explores how structural and cultural forces shape experiences of inequality and disadvantage, working at the intersection of culture, community, and care. It is grounded in a deep commitment to social justice, equity, and inclusion, with a strong interdisciplinary focus that spans sociology, community development, communications, and social work. Her work is characterised by applied, impact-driven practice and methodological rigor, especially in qualitative and visual methods, with a sustained focus on vulnerable and marginalised populations. She is passionate about translating research into practice and amplifying voices of those with lived/living experience.

In addition to her research focus, Laura demonstrates a passion for creating safe and inclusive spaces in which research and teaching can be grounded and learning shared. She has a strong history of service and mentoring with students and early career academics, especially those returning to study or coming from non-traditional or marginalised backgrounds.

I am an urban sociologist and an expert in urban community in all its forms. My research encompasses the outer suburbs in Australia, the gentrifying inner city and informal communities in cities in the Global South. My work focuses on how different urban places and spatial logic in the city impact our opportunities to form attachments to neighbourhoods and each other.

Internationally, I have written extensively on urban poverty in Bangladesh, India and Indonesia and I am currently involved in work on climate change and its effects on the urban poor in collaboration with colleagues in Indonesia, Brazil and Solomon Islands. My latest research concerns the impact of climate change and natural disasters on the urban poor. More than 1 billion people live in informal urban settlements or slums. These people are among the most vulnerable to the impact of climate change. However, adaptation and mitigation policies are being formulated at multiple scales, often without considering the voices of the poor.

I am the Bachelor of Arts Sociology program convenor and an award-winning teacher. I teach courses at all levels in our undergraduate sociology program, including Introduction to Sociology (SOCY1050), An Urban World (SOCY2340) and Advanced Studies in Social Thought: Getting the Big Picture (SOCY3345).

I am also an award-winning photographer (you can see some of my work on my Flickr page.

I am open to proposals from potential Honours and PhD students who share my passion for understanding the social life of cities. Whether you're from Australia, the Global South, or anywhere else in the world, I look forward to the possibility of working together.