Meet the team

Associate Professor Lorna Hallahan has been a social worker for over 35 years and an advocate for people with disability issues for over 25 years. She is a social worker, researcher and person with lived experience of disability. She is strategically pushing for change across disability policy, adoption law, and workers' rights across human and health services.

In 2019, Associate Professor Lorna Hallahan was appointed National Research Director for the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability to set up the Royal Commission’s research framework. Associate Professor Hallahan has an extensive background in social work practice and leadership. She has contributed to disability policy for many years, including helping to develop and evaluate the National Disability Insurance Scheme trial and was Independent Reviewer of the SA Adoptions Act (1988) in 2015.

Dr Ben Lohmeyer is a Youth Sociologist and Youth Worker. He has over 10 years’ experience working in non-government youth service sector with young people around issues of violence and justice in alternative education and accommodation sectors. His research is at the intersection of youth sociology and the sociology of violence and considers the implications for youth policy and youth work practice. 

Rather than looking for a cause of violence inside young people’s minds and bodies, Ben’s research reveals the hidden forms of violence that follows the patterns of violation deeply embedded in our societies and our stories. Ben’s research amplifies young people’s voices and experiences on issues such school bullying, violence and political protest. Ben is the Chair of Youth Work SA, a Professional Association for Youth Workers in South Australia.

Dr Carmela Bastian is committed to improving the lives of children. She has over twenty years’ experience in the field of child protection and human services as a social work practitioner and academic. Carmela's employment history exemplifies a wide range of experiences, including as a front line practitioner, policy and program manager, and involvement in service development. Her PhD research—called The moral status of children in child protection: the case for emerging from our moral ignorance—engaged in philosophical deliberation to assert that children are valuable members of the human community and illuminate the criticality of relationships, rights and obligations.

Dr Kate Seymour  is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work and, previously, in Criminology. Known for her contribution to the critical study of masculinities and men's violence, her research expertise spans the fields of social work and criminology with a focus on the intersecting discourses of gender, masculinities and violence. Kate is especially interested in the ways in which the framing of violence, across the realms of policy, prevention, and practice, reflect and reinforce structural inequalities and social hierarchies. She is a skilled qualitative researcher with a background in direct social work practice and management in the areas of housing and homelessness, child protection, and adult offending including work with male perpetrators of domestic and family violence.

Luke Cantley has family connections to the Gunditjmara nation of Victoria and is a Research Associate located within the Social Work Innovation Research Living Space (SWIRLS) at Flinders University. Through his research Luke seeks to understand the role Indigenous culture plays as a protective factor within the child protection system, whilst also exploring the nuances between child safety and cultural safety. Luke has gained extensive experience working as an Aboriginal Health Worker using a strengths-based approach across diverse sectors including Prison Health, Primary Health Care, Public Housing and Mental Health Services. Luke’s developing expertise includes culturally appropriate and ethical ways of engaging with community members,  health and wellbeing assessment methods fostering participatory action research, and social inequities generated by reduced access to services or resources. 

Professor Gerry Redmond’s research is concerned with inequalities between young people, and the societal and policy factors that influence these inequalities. A sociologist by training, Gerry has led policy-focused projects that involve in-depth research with children and young people, coupled with large scale survey design and analysis. His work aims to cut across the policy silos the impact young people’s lives, for example, education, health, and family policy. He is currently leading an ARC funded project on social exclusion and wellbeing in adolescence, with a focus on the experiences of materially disadvantaged young people, young carers, and young people with disabilities. 

Professor Sally Robinson is a Professor of Disability and Community Inclusion in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Flinders University. Her program coordinates multiple projects, focusing on the development of innovative interdisciplinary research and teaching which privileges the participation of people with disability and draws together conceptual interests around inclusion, belonging and safety. Sally conducts these projects in collaboration with high profile academic, industry and community partners, bringing into dialogue with others my expertise on abuse, children and young people, regionality and rurality, and inclusive methodologies.

Dr Alhassan Abdullah is a Lecturer in Social Work in the College of Education, Psychology and Social Work. Dr Abdullah’s research focuses on child protection, child abuse and neglect, family violence and community response to address child maltreatment. He has conducted research projects and published over 40 peer-reviewed articles on child protection and family violence issues in Africa and Asia (Nepal, Hong Kong, Korea and China). His current research focuses on developing early intervention and preventive measures to address child neglect, abuse and intimate partner violence, through the use of community-based cultural resources within child protection. A number of his research projects has been supported by grants from UNICEF and the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Dr Abdullah’s approach to research and scholarship brings theoretical and methodological rigor to the study of child maltreatment and family violence. He has expertise in conducting qualitative and quantitative research. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Practice: Social Work in Action.