A/PROF SUE OLNEY

Sue (she/her) is the Director of Power to Persuade. She is the UoM-BSL Principal Research Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, and a Visiting Fellow in the Public Service Research Group in the School of Business at UNSW Canberra. Her research focuses on the impact of reform of public services on citizens with complex needs. Over her career in universities, government and in the not-for-profit sector, she has been part of numerous research teams, government inquiries, cross-government and cross-sector initiatives, committees and working groups examining governance, policy implementation and equity issues in employment, training and disability services in Australia and internationally, and has worked on both sides of government contracts. Sue holds a PhD in Public Policy and is on the editorial board of the Australian Journal of Public Administration. She tweets @olney_sue

 

DR sophie yates

Sophie is a Research Fellow at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU and was previously Research Fellow at the Public Service Research Group, School of Business, UNSW Canberra and the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). Her research focuses on value creation in public services, particularly for those from marginalised groups. She has published on issues such as gender and family violence, disability policy, and services for people leaving prison. She is Associate Editor of the Australian Journal of Social Issues and editorial board member of Public Management Review. She has published in top international journals and won several awards for her research. Sophie tweets @DrSophieYates.

 

DR SUSAN MAURY

Susan is Lead, Research and Impact in the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth). Prior to joining VicHealth, she was the Senior Research and Evaluation Officer at Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand, specialising in the gendered nature of poverty in Australia, the welfare system, and precarious employment. She oversees the Women’s Policy Action Tank, and also regularly contributes analyses on the differential gendered impacts of government policy and how psychology can illuminate policy shortfalls. Prior to moving to Australia, Susan spent 20 years in the international development sector. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English/writing concentration, a Master of Science in organisational behaviour, and a PhD in psychology from Monash University. Susan tweets @SusanMaury

 

Dr SARAH-JANE FENTON

Sarah-Jane is a Lecturer in Mental Health Policy at the University of Birmingham.  Sarah-Jane holds a joint PhD in Social Policy from the Universities of Birmingham (UK) and Melbourne (Australia). Her PhD research looked at mental health policy and service delivery for 16-25 year olds in the UK and Australia. Prior to undertaking her PhD Sarah-Jane worked for many years in the charity sector in the UK with children, young people and families, which is where her interest in this field began. Since completing the PhD Sarah-Jane has worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Warwick (UK) on an NIHR funded study looking at Evaluating the Use of Patient Experience Data to Improve the Quality of Inpatient Mental Health Care (EURIPIDES).

 

THE ANTIPOVERTY CENTRE

The experts on poverty, disadvantage and unemployment are the people who live it. The Antipoverty Centre is an unfunded organisation run by people who rely on social security payments to live, working to put the voices and rights of people living in poverty at the centre of social policy development and discourse. You can follow the Centre’s work on its website, and on Twitter (@antipovertycent), Facebook and YouTube.

The Antipoverty Centre raises funds independently to pay people on low incomes to write posts for their moderating weeks. The link to donate to the Centre’s dedicated writers’ fund is here. Posts commissioned by the Antipoverty Centre are published on the blog and are also collated here.

 

DR SIMONE CASEY

Simone is a Senior Project Officer at Economic Justice Australia. She has a background in social policy research and advocacy relating to labour market programs, unemployment, welfare conditionality, automation in social security, and structural discrimination perpetuating the social and economic inequality of women and people with disabilities. Simone has previously held a variety of roles in policy advocacy, research and communications  in the employment services and welfare sectors. She holds a PhD in employment services, and is a Research Associate at RMIT.

Simone has contributed to many academic and normative research projects involving quantitative and qualitative research methods, where the publication outputs have been both scholarly and/or policy focused.

 

Dr Jeremiah Brown

Jeremiah is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Melbourne in the School of Social and Political Sciences. His work employs Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach to human welfare to understand a variety of different wellbeing outcomes relating to freedom, democracy and public policy. Currently Jeremiah is working on the relationship between administrative burden and access to social security. His previous work has examined a range of public policy issues including the underfunding of Australian for-purpose organisations, the drivers of low financial wellbeing, and inequality in wellbeing outcomes across established democratic societies. He tweets @jeremiahtbrown.

 
 

LIFE COURSE CENTRE

The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (Life Course Centre) is a national research centre investigating the critical factors underlying deep and persistent disadvantage to provide life-changing solutions for policy and service delivery. The centre is a collaboration between The University of Queensland, the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne and The University of Western Australia and is supported by international experts as well as Australian government and non-government organisations working at the front line of disadvantage. Life Course Centre researchers are committed to understanding the experiences of Australians facing disadvantage in their daily lives, and to better equipping them to overcome it. This commitment is founded in a life course approach to identifying key life transitions and how they shape life trajectories, and to developing strategic interventions to improve life opportunities and outcomes. Visit our website or follow us on Twitter @lifecourseAust

 

Dr Rhiannon Parker

Rhiannon is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Impact, UNSW. She is interested in examining inequalities within education and healthcare systems through an exploration of the lived experiences of people from marginalised and vulnerable communities. Key areas she has undertaken research on include lived experiences of cancer care, the social dynamics of end-of-life care, socioeconomic disadvantage in educational attainment, school belonging, and sex & gender-based inequality in medical education.

 

Dr RAELENE WEST

Rae’s field of research is critical disability studies, with a focus on delivery of support services. She has also been involved in disability advocacy, has been on numerous disability committees and has lived experience of disability. She has a PhD in Sociology - Disability from the University of Melbourne and has worked for several years as an early career researcher on various disability and aged care research studies. She is currently working as a Social Researcher at the Melbourne Disability Institute (MDI) - University of Melbourne. She has publications in the areas of ableism, individualised funding models, marketisation of service delivery, use of technology in service delivery and human rights. She tweets at @raelene_west

 

Dr LISA WHEILDON

Lisa recently completed her doctorate at BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University. Her research focuses on the role of victim-survivor advocates with lived experience of gender-based violence as change agents for public policy reform. Lisa came to BehaviourWorks after having spent 10 years in senior communications and stakeholder engagement roles in the Victorian public service, and having helped to establish Our Watch, the national, not-for-profit foundation to prevent violence against women. Lisa was previously the Director of Marketing and Communications at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG), and completed the Executive Master of Public Administration with ANZSOG in 2010. You can find Lisa on Twitter here: @wheeliebinit

 

CARISSA JEDWAB

Carissa is a social researcher and policy advisor in the migration and humanitarian settlement sector. In her current role at AMES Australia, Carissa delivers primary research and policy advice that reflects the diverse needs and experiences of multicultural communities. Carissa’s interests include migration policy, language, and community development, and she is on the Research Working Group for Volunteering Australia’s National Strategy for Volunteering. Carissa holds a Master’s Degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of Melbourne. You can find Carissa on Twitter @carissajedwab.

 

HEIDI CLAUS

Heidi (she/her) is a social worker in disability and mental health and is working on her master of Disability Practice and Leadership at Flinders University, focusing on research and policy development. Heidi’s volunteer activism includes work in community housing where she is the Chair of the Board of Common Equity Housing SA. As a political activist with Socialist Alternative over many years, Heidi was a leading activist in Sydney with Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH) and the successful campaign for Marriage Equality. Heidi has worked as a teacher and counsellor in schools, and a social worker in disability and child and family health, all of which informs her passion for effecting change from below, and her interest in research focuses on how those impacted by policy can be more integral to all stages of policy decision making and implementation. Connect with Heidi via LinkedIn or X .

 

AUWU: Australian unemployed workers’ union

The Australian Unemployed Workers' Union is an independent national volunteer organisation run by the unemployed, for the unemployed. The AUWU is dedicated to protecting the rights and dignity of unemployed workers and pensioners through our national advocacy hotline and campaigning work. Membership is free and open for all. You can follow us on twitter @ausunemployment

 

DR ELROY DEARN

Dr Elroy Dearn (they/them), Research Fellow Summer Foundation, alumni RMIT University and GIS Research Fellow RMIT University completed a PhD in 2021. Their PhD study was a critical ethnographic study exploring the experience of choice and control for people with psychosocial disabilities living in supported residential services (SRS) over the first 18 months of the NDIS. Elroy’s professional background includes employment as a psychosocial rehabilitation worker in the community-based mental health sector, as a community development worker in the homelessness sector and 20 years’ experience in senior policy and research positions in local and state government and at the Victorian Office of the Public Advocate. Research interests include homelessness, institutionalisation, psychosocial disability, and human rights. Elroy is leading research at the Summer Foundation about why young people are (still) stuck in residential aged care despite the presence of new funding and accommodation alternatives. A passionate advocate for pathways out of SRS, Elroy co-founded of the Private Congregate Care Alliance in 2018, and has been invited to be guest editor for the Parity Magazine special edition on SRS and private supported boarding houses in 2024.

 

RUTH PITT

Ruth Pitt is the Research and Evaluation Lead at Health Justice Australia, where her role is to support health justice partnerships to measure and communicate their outcomes, and to build the evidence base for health justice partnership in Australia. She’s also the Evaluation Specialist at Collective Action, a consultancy focusing on design and evaluation for social justice and public health programs, particularly in violence prevention, sexual and reproductive health, and healthcare for LGBTIQA+ communities. Ruth has diverse evaluation experience in government, non-profit and consultancy roles. Her government experience includes as Director of Evaluation Capability at the National Indigenous Australians Agency, and Assistant Director in the Evaluation Unit of the Department of Social Services. She has a master’s degree in public health, completed as part of the East-West Center Graduate Fellowship program.  Moderating P2P is part of her interest in the role of evaluation to shape effective public policy and programs.

 

women's policy action tank

The Women’s Policy Action Tank is a joint initiative of the Power to Persuade and the Social Policy Team at Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand.  Women and men experience the impacts of policy in different ways. Acknowledgement of this fact is evident in specific policy areas such as childcare and domestic violence. The vast majority of policies, however, purport to be gender-neutral. There is growing concern that this approach drastically fails women, contributing to a feminisation of poverty, negative health and safety consequences and an accrual of disadvantage across the lifespan.  The Action Tank is addressing the policy gap, by providing an analysis of a range of policies using a gender lens.  You can read more about the Women’s Policy Action Tank and its other initiatives here.