ORCID Profile
0000-0002-7794-6481
Current Organisations
Southern Cross University
,
Auckland University of Technology
,
Southern Cross University - Gold Coast Campus
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Research Topics
In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Top 5 Research Topics
ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)
Counselling, Welfare and Community Services | Social Policy | Social work | Social Work | Counselling wellbeing and community services
ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)
Related Links
Publications
BlackLivesMatter in Healthcare: Racism and Implications for Health Inequity among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 21-04-2021
Abstract: Despite decades of evidence showing that institutional and interpersonal racism serve as significant barriers to accessible healthcare for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, attempts to address this systemic problem still fall short. The social determinants of health are particularly poignant given the socio-political-economic history of invasion, colonisation, and subsequent entrenchment of racialised practices in the Australian healthcare landscape. Embedded within Euro-centric, bio-medical discourses, Western dominated healthcare processes can erase significant cultural and historical contexts and unwittingly reproduce unsafe practices. Put simply, if Black lives matter in healthcare, why do Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples die younger and experience ‘epidemic’ levels of chronic diseases as compared to white Australians? To answer this, we utilise critical race perspectives to theorise this gap and to de-center whiteness as the normalised position of ‘doing’ healthcare. We draw on our erse knowledges through a decolonised approach to promote a theoretical discussion that we contend can inform alternative ways of knowing, being, and doing in healthcare practice in Australia.
Injured bodies, damaged lives: experiences and narratives of Kenyan women with obstetric fistula and Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 14-03-2017
Dead Aid: The Cases of International Development Agencies in Uganda, Kenya, and Nepal
Publisher: Springer Nature Singapore
Date: 2023
What is known about child sexual exploitation in residential care in Australia? A systematic scoping review
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2020
Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia: Articulations of Blackness and Africanness
Publisher: Springer Nature Singapore
Date: 2022
“The most challenging aspect of this journey has been dealing with child protection”: Kinship carers’ experiences in Australia
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2022
Leaning into the discomfort and embracing the disruption: a Freirean approach to (de)colonised social work teaching in Australia
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-07-2018
Minority Stress for Care Experienced Young Queer People: A Case Study
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 16-11-2022
Care experienced LGBTQA + young people in out-of-home care in Australia: A case study
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2022
Lived Experiences of Slovak and Czech Immigrants to Australia
Publisher: University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
Date: 17-01-2022
Abstract: Abstract After World War II, an estimated five million people were on the move in Czechoslovakia. Between 1954 and 1970, over 16,000 of them immigrated to Australia. This paper is part of a larger research project that provides an in-depth inquiry of the lived experiences of 18 post-World War II emigrants from Czechoslovakia, who are now Australian citizens. Findings reveal emigrants’ significant emotional reflections about their life in Czechoslovakia and provide vivid phenomenological accounts of their views about their original country’s political and economic context and life within it, as well as challenges related to leaving the country and their lived experiences as displaced persons in foreign countries and Displaced Persons c s.
Putting vaginal fistulas on the international social work map: A critical perspective
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 25-11-2015
Abstract: Why should social workers care about vaginal fistulas? Why should we turn our attention to a health problem mostly experienced by materially impoverished young Black women, especially those in Africa? Using a critical perspective, which we define, we argue that vaginal fistulas are much more than a gynaecological health issue but symptomatic of the gender-, race-, class- and age-based oppressions many young Black women in the ‘Third World’ suffer. Affecting very few White western women but plenty of subjugated Black women forced to live in chronic poverty, and exposed to multiple levels of control from early in their lives, vaginal fistula sufferers often have little, if any, access to adequate health services. Our aim is to put vaginal fistulas on the global social work agenda. It is a call to work towards ending a problem that produces much shame and suffering for far too many women.
Teaching about vulnerability and love in social work: lessons and reflections from two academics
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-09-2023
Telling Our Stories: Resilience during Resettlement for African Skilled Migrants in Australia
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 09-04-2021
Abstract: Background: Emigration to Australia by people from Africa has grown steadily in the past two decades, with skilled migration an increasingly significant component of migration streams. Challenges to resettlement in Australia by African migrants have been identified, including difficulties securing employment, experiences of racism, discrimination and social isolation. These challenges can negatively impact resettlement outcomes, including health and wellbeing. There has been limited research that has examined protective and resilience factors that help highly skilled African migrants mitigate the aforementioned challenges in Australia. This paper discusses how in idual and community resilience factors supported successful resettlement Africans in Australia. The paper is contextualised within a larger study which sought to investigate how belonging and identity inform Afrodiasporic experiences of Africans in Australia. Methods: A qualitative inquiry was conducted with twenty-seven (n = 27) skilled African migrants based in South Australia, using face-to-face semi-structured interviews. Participants were not directly questioned about ‘resilience,’ but were encouraged to reflect critically on how they navigated the transition to living in Australia, and to identify factors that facilitated a successful resettlement. Results: The study findings revealed a mixture of settlement experiences for participants. Resettlement challenges were observed as barriers to fully meeting expectations of emigration. However, there were significant protective factors reported that supported resilience, including participants’ capacities for excellence and willingness to work hard the social capital vested in community and family support networks and African religious and cultural values and traditions. Many participants emphasised their pride in their contributions to Australian society as well as their desire to contribute to changing narratives of what it means to be African in Australia. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that despite challenges, skilled African migrants’ resilience, ambition and determination were significant enablers to a healthy resettlement in Australia, contributing effectively to social, economic and cultural expectations, and subsequently meeting most of their own migration intentions. These findings suggest that resilience factors identified in the study are key elements of integration.
From Adversity to Stability to Integration: how One Australian Program is Making a Difference in Therapeutic Foster Care
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-11-2019
‘Block, Unfollow, Delete’: The Impacts of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement on Interracial Relationships in Australia
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 29-01-2022
DOI: 10.1093/BJSW/BCAC008
Abstract: Interracial relationships are situated historically within a complex racial discourse. At the height of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement in 2020, interracial relationships were tested, broken and repaired, whilst others were unable to withstand the racial destabilisation summoned by the Movement. In this article, we theorise how Blac/k bodies are organised and structured within systems of racial hierachialisation and the impact of this within relational contexts. Probing concepts of silence, fragility and allyship, which underpin the white racial frame, we provide critical argumentations of how processes of racialisation impact personal relationships where variables of blackness and whiteness are produced as sites of racial contestation. We argue that the political significance of race enters interracial relationships and theoretically transforms them into racial battlegrounds.
#BlackLivesMatter: Exploring the digital practises of African Australian youth on social media
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 02-05-2022
DOI: 10.1177/01634437221089246
Abstract: African Australian diasporic literature has drawn attention to the anti-Black racism Black African young people endure in everyday Australia. By drawing on a multi-method approach consisting of social media ethnography and multiple participant interviews, this paper explores the use of social media by Black African young people (n=15) to visibilise their experiences of racism. We situate the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, as a significant ‘turning point’ when the social media practises of our participants radically transformed. Our findings indicate that prior to the murder of George Floyd, participants evoked careful boundaries around the type of racial content they posted for fear of the punishments or backlash that could occur if they disrupted the white racial comfort of their friends and followers. After the murder of Floyd, participants used the resurgence of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement to visibilise their own experiences of anti-Black racism and racial violence in Australia, sharing content on social media that marked whiteness, demanded safety and challenged white silence and performative allyship.
Approaches to Assessment and Intervention With Children and Young People Who Engage in Harmful Sexual Behavior: A Scoping Review
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 03-08-2023
DOI: 10.1177/15248380231189293
Abstract: This paper reports the findings of a project that conducted a rapid review of evidence regarding assessment and intervention approaches responding to children and young people who engage in harmful sexual behaviors. A literature review was conducted using a systematic search of academic databases and consultation with subject matter experts. The process resulted in 27 scholarly publications being included and analyzed to explore what was known about effective approaches with children and young people who have engaged in harmful sexual behavior. The review found that the current state of knowledge was limited, with few of the included papers reporting research outcomes. In the absence of a sound evidence base, additional theoretical literature and expert commentary have been drawn upon to better understand issues in this complex practice area. A key finding of this review was that growing awareness that children and young people who engage in harmful sexual behaviors are, first and foremost, children. They should not be regarded as soon-to-be-adults who are engaging in adult offending. This shift in thinking informs contemporary assessment and intervention approaches, challenging those models that previously focused on measuring risk using forensic approaches to predict the likelihood of future offending. A critical failure to understand the needs of specific cohorts of children and young people was also evident.
The implications of Neoliberalism on African economies, health outcomes and wellbeing: a conceptual argument
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 26-06-2020
African womanhood and incontinent bodies: Kenyan women with vaginal fistulas
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Date: 2018
Racial microaggressions at work: Reflections from black african professionals in Australia
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 25-12-2021
DOI: 10.1093/BJSW/BCAA145
Abstract: Theorising how race and Africanness intersect in the professional lives of African immigrants can provide a nuanced understanding of how racial identities shape the professional identities of Black Africans in Australia. This article is contextualised within a larger study that sought to explore the Afro-diasporic experiences of highly skilled Black African immigrants in South Australia. Particularly, it examines how Black African professionals experience their workplace. Data were collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews with twenty-seven Black African professionals in South Australia. The findings from this study reveal that the often-accepted narrative of race-free workplaces is not one that is supported by Black African immigrants’ experiences, as they report constant, subtle and covert patterns of racial microaggressions in the workplace. Utilising critical race theories, this article makes the invisibility of microaggressions visible by probing how the Black body is worn as a burden in the workplace, which consequently produces psychological distress and racial battle fatigue. This study will provide social work practitioners with a critical understanding of the various challenges facing African professionals in the workplace, and how processes of racialisation at work may impact on psychological safety in this environment.
Afrocentric ways of ‘doing’ social work
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 27-11-2020
Afrocentric Feminism and Ubuntu-Led Social Work Practice in an African Context
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2022
‘I’m a Local…’
Publisher: University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
Date: 14-10-2019
Abstract: This article discusses the impact and implications of ‘I’m a Local…’, an initiative developed in partnership between a regional university, a refugee resettlement community organisation and former refugees from African nations in a regional Australian community. The initiative sought to improve understandings about refugees, acknowledge their contributions to Australian society and support local, inclusive cultures. It included the development of public resources exploring the process of former refugees in establishing a sense of belonging and becoming ‘locals’. Racialised ‘Others’ continue to be excluded from ‘belonging’ within Australian communities at a wide range of practical and symbolic levels, so it remains an ongoing challenge to broaden the experience of belonging, challenge the borders erected around ‘local’ identities, and work to transform Australia’s post-colonial paradigm. ‘I’m a Local…’ provides an instructive ex le of how change agents from different sectors working collaboratively can dismantle prevailing discourses and affirm more inclusive and hopeful futures.
Shaking off the Imposter Syndrome: Our Place in the Resistance
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2022
Parenting Black children in White spaces: Skilled African migrants reflect on their parenting experiences in Australia
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 08-10-2021
DOI: 10.1111/CFS.12799
Abstract: This paper employs a critical race theory (CRT) perspective to probe the experiences of skilled African migrants parenting Black children in Australia, a predominantly White country. Two key themes emerged from this study: (1) the need to explicitly teach children about race and racism and to foster positive racial identities and (2) the complexities of navigating tensions between ‘African’ and ‘Western’ cultural values. Participants demonstrated high levels of awareness of intercultural parenting approaches and a desire to blend the best aspects of African and Australian cultural values in their own parenting practice. A significant paradox was also apparent in the tension between parental desires to inculcate pride in African ancestry and culture, while simultaneously encouraging children to ‘curate’ their blackness to minimize experiences of racialization. Social workers in Australia often play a critical role in the lives of migrant families as they support them to negotiate transitions in parenting contexts. Although this paper only offers a perspective on the parenting experiences of skilled African migrants and how they creatively manage the tensions and change emerging from this process, we suggest that this understanding helps to expand knowledge on the complexity of parenting in multicultural, transcultural and intercultural contexts.
Choosing Marginality: Seeing Beauty in Defiant and Antiracist Scholarship
Publisher: Springer Nature Singapore
Date: 2023
Battling the “headwinds”: the experiences of minoritised academics in the neoliberal Australian university
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-12-2020
A paradigm shift in responding to children who have experienced trauma: The Australian treatment and care for kids program
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2018
Reclaiming racial dignity: An ethnographic study of how African youth in Australia use social media to visibilise anti‐Black racism
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-06-2022
DOI: 10.1002/AJS4.224
Abstract: The #BlackLivesMatter Movement has lified the role of social media in visibilising anti‐Black violence. Drawing on the narratives and expertise of those who have experienced anti‐Black racism, this paper employs the theoretical concept of racial dignity to highlight how young African Australians participate in racial discourse on social media. The findings of this paper demonstrate that social media is a significant site where Black African youth reclaim racial dignity through: 1) reversing the white gaze 2) recognising and calling out anti‐blackness and 3) cultivating and engaging in communities of healing and belonging. Through these digital practices, Black African youth in Australia foster racial agency that promotes positive self‐recognition, racial resilience and racial dignity. We argue, therefore, that social media offer Black African young people in Australia spaces to engage in positive expressions of Afro‐blackness and challenge anti‐blackness in ways that are safer to them than in physical, offline settings in white contexts.
What does research tell us about young people’s participation in decision making in residential care? A systematic scoping review
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2021
‘Teaching shouldn’t feel like a combat sport’: how teaching evaluations are weaponised against minoritised academics
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 18-02-2021
Boundaries of belonging: Theorizing black african migrant experiences in Australia
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 23-12-2021
Abstract: As nationalist ideologies intensify in Australia, so do the experiences of ‘everyday racism’ and exclusion for Black African immigrants. In this article, we utilize critical theories and engage with colonial histories to contextualize Afrodiasporic experiences in Australia, arguing that the conditional acceptance of Black bodies within Australian spaces is contingent upon the status quo of the white hegemony. The tropes and discourses that render the bodies of Black African migrants simultaneously invisible and hyper-visible indicate that immigration is not only a movement of bodies, but also a phenomenon solidly tied to global inequality, power, and the abjection of blackness. Drawing on critical race perspectives and theories of belonging, we highlight through use of literature how Black Africans in Australia are constructed as ‘perpetual strangers’. As moral panics and discourses of hyper-criminality are summoned, the bordering processes are also simultaneously co-opted to reinforce scrutiny and securitization, with significant implications for social cohesion, belonging and public health.
Multi-Area Throughput and Energy Optimization of UAV-Aided Cellular Networks Powered by Solar Panels and Grid
Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Date: 07-2021
African Diasporic Migration Trends, Relocation, and Resettlement
Publisher: Oxford University PressNew York
Date: 27-08-2023
DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780197687307.003.0008
Abstract: This chapter debates the centrality of migration to population and economic growth and nation-building in Australia and the tensions between continued migration and simultaneous tendencies toward insularity. It argues that insularity manifests through efforts to differentiate between “desirable” and “undesirable” migrants based on identity markers. The chapter uses historical and contemporary migration policies and laws in Australia to illustrate dominant attitudes, practices, and trends that inform the experience of migrants to Australia. In doing so, it focuses on research on African migration to Australia, unsettling the dominant perception that Africans are recent newcomers to Australia. The chapter concludes that immigrants’ experiences of migration and resettlement through successive phases of migration policies in Australia provide an illuminating lens on past, current, and future trends and challenges for migration to Australia. It urges the use of a decolonial and intersectional perspective to analyze these key issues.
Women Who Lose Their Lives While Giving Life: Exploring Obstetric Fistula as a Public Health Issue in Kenya
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2022
Afro-diasporic Experiences of Highly Skilled Black African Immigrants in Australia
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-03-2021
Feminicide Data Activism
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 20-04-2023
Phenomenological, African feminist research: Kenyan women’s stories of living with vaginal fistulas
Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
Date: 2018
Indigenous Children and Young People in Residential Care: A Systematic Scoping Review.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 30-10-2021
Abstract: In Australia and internationally, Indigenous children are seriously overrepresented in the child welfare system. This article provides an overview of literature investigating the needs of Indigenous children in residential care facilities. The provision of culturally safe and trauma-informed therapeutic care to Indigenous children and young people in residential care recognizes that the trauma and violence that they have experienced is exacerbated by their Indigeneity due to the colonial histories presenting. Utilizing a systematic scoping review methodology, the study returned a total of 637 peer-reviewed articles that were identified and reviewed for inclusion. The process of exclusion resulted in the inclusion of eight peer-reviewed studies and 51 reports and discussion papers sourced from gray literature. Findings from this study, though dearth, indicate that trauma-informed and culturally safe interventions play a significant role in Indigenous children's health and well-being while in care. Their experiences of abuse and neglect transcend in idual trauma and include intergenerational pain and suffering resulting from long-lasting impacts of colonization, displacement from culture and country, genocidal policies, racism, and the overall systemic disadvantage. As such, a therapeutic response, embedded within Indigenous cultural frameworks and knowledges of trauma, is not only important but absolutely necessary and aims to acknowledge the intersectionality between the needs of Indigenous children in care and the complex systemic disadvantage impacting them.
Impacts of COVID-19 on African Migrants’ Wellbeing, and Their Coping Strategies in Urban and Regional New South Wales, Australia: a Qualitative Study
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 28-09-2023
Pedagogy or “trauma porn”? Racial literacy as a prerequisite for teaching racially dignifying content in the Australian social work context
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 05-04-2022
Abstract: On June 21, 2021, a motion was introduced to the Australian Senate calling on the federal government to reject critical race theory (CRT) from the national curriculum, claiming that CRT is isive and racist. This was allegedly sparked by revisions to the national school curriculum, which included a more accurate reflection of the historical record of First Nations peoples’ experiences of colonisation and the framing of British arrival onto the continent as an invasion. This paper aims to overview the omnipresence of Western thought systems in the academy and critiques how knowledge production as a disciplinary practice positions race as a “marginalised knowledge”. This paper is conceptual and it theorises the morphology and functions of racism within the Australian education system specifically, and across the board. This theorisation offers an invaluable starting point in rethinking how we advocate for and preserve Blac/k scholarship in academia. It examines how the political economy of racism in education offers a transformative position from which scholars can contribute to potential systemic change that promotes racial literacy and racial dignity, and the conditions necessary to foster these changes. The paper confirms what studies by Blac/k scholars already highlight: that racialised knowledges are marked – as an aesthetic addition or as disruptive – or unnecessary – and how these patterns of colonial desires are manifested in the classroom or in race discourse. Specifically, the arguments made in this paper examine two undertheorised concepts, namely, “racial dignity” and “trauma porn” to foreground the reimagination of practices that inform racial literacy in education. This offers a helpful starting place to consider how this form of education facilitates ongoing settler colonialism in Australia. The authors then propose an anti-racist pedagogical practice in social work education entailing three core crucial and transformative elements: self- reflexivity, storytelling and collaboration with Blac/k people.
A Sustainable Connectivity Model of the Internet Access Technologies in Rural and Low-Income Areas
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2018
The prevalence of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder among African migrants: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2022
DOI: 10.1016/J.PSYCHRES.2022.114899
Abstract: Evidence exists reporting a high mental health burden among migrants globally. However, there is no global estimate of mental ill-health among African migrants despite their adverse pre-migration environments. This systematic review and meta-analysis summarise the current scholarship regarding the prevalence of anxiety, depression and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the global African migrant population. We searched six databases (Medline (EBSCOHost), PsycINFO (EBSCOHost), Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) from 1st January 2000 to 31st August 2021. We screened retrieved articles using strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. Study quality was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal tools. Random-effects meta-analyses were employed using DerSimonian and Laird estimator based on inverse variance weights. The I Our search retrieved 1091 articles, of which 46 were included representing a total of 28,367 African migrants. The weighted mean age of African migrants was 32.98 years, and nearly half were male (n= 12852, 45.31%). Among the included studies, almost nine out of ten (n=41, 89.1%) were cross-sectional studies. The pooled prevalence of anxiety, depression and PTSD was 34.60% %CI (26.30-43.00), 33.20% %CI (27.70-38.37) and 37.9% %CI (23.5- 52.4) respectively. Significant heterogeneity (I Despite significant heterogeneity among included studies, our systematic review and meta-analysis show a high prevalence of anxiety, depression, and PTSD among African migrants. Our findings underscore the need to develop and implement serious, culturally appropriate mental health interventions that address post-migration stressors that increase their risk of mental ill-health and successful integration into host communities.
Related Organisations
Related Funding Activities
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE230101177
Start Date: 2023
End Date: 12-2025
Amount: $456,607.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityLinkage Projects - Grant ID: LP210100177
Start Date: 06-2022
End Date: 06-2025
Amount: $429,569.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity