Teaching interests

I teach broadly in the field of development studies. Special interests lie in gender and development, and culture and development, and I contribute to topics on sustainable development and international work integrated learning.

Topic Coordinator:

• DVST1002  Social and Cultural Change in the Global South
• DVST8010  Development Problems, Policies and Programs
• DVST9022  Theory and Evidence in International Development
• DVST9033  Gender Mainstreaming Research Project
• DVST9035  Development Studies International Practicum

Research expertise

• Human geography

Research interests

My research has focused on two main fields of study:

• Critical development studies (esp. development volunteering, culture and social change, gender and development, poverty reduction policy making)

• Social and cultural geographies of migration, ethnicity and race  (esp. refugee and migrant settlement, constructions of racial and ethnic identities)

In critical development studies my work has focused on analysing the conceptual premises on which development policies and development scholarship are based. Empirically this work has centred on the role of ICTs in development, the participatory turn, gender and poverty reduction strategies. My current research project examines the impacts of international volunteering on host organisations and volunteers, as well as on constructions of development cooperation as partnership.

In social and cultural geography my research has examined how migrants and refugees reconstruct their identities in Australia within terrains and settlement contexts that are structured by race, class, gender, and underpinned by often implicit notions of modernity and development. Currently my attention is drawn to the ways in which the experiences and impacts of migration manifest differently in different places, and how sub-state regions shape these social transformations through migration.

External grants:
Cosmopolitan development: the impacts of international volunteering (ARC LP120200085; 2012-2015)
From stranger to citizen: migration, modernisation and racialisation in the making of the new Australian (ARC DP0665782; 2006-07)  

Supervisory interests

• Aid, international development and trade in services
• Gender and development
• Identity constructions of refugees and migrants

RHD research supervision

Current

Associate supervisor: International development (3);

Completion

Principal supervisor: International development (3); Migration ethnicity & race (3);

Associate supervisor: International development (3);

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I have almost a decade of experience in designing, managing and delivering gender training courses in Indonesia and Australia under the Australian Agency for International Development. I lead training teams in over 20 week-long Gender Mainstreaming and Analysis training courses in Indonesia. Currently I provide management and advice to the Gender Consortium at Flinders University which I helped to establish. The Gender Consortium is committed to gender sensitive policy, planning and project implementation in Australia, Asia and the Pacific Region, and Africa. It has conducted several intensive Australian Leadership Award Fellowship programs on themes including trafficking of women, gender and disability, women's and children's safety, and gender violence prevention. It has research expertise in gender auditing, women and security, and applied policy research on gender equity.

I am actively engaged in fostering research on migration and refugees in South Australian universities. I represent Flinders University on the steering committee Don Dunstan Foundation Refugee Research Project which seeks to bring together refugee and migration research across the South Australian universities and encourage the funding and uptake of research by civil society organisations, government and NGO partners. I am co-convenor of the Migration Update conferences.