ProfessorSusan Goodwin

Project Opportunities

Title: Social Policy, Gender, and Social Change

Summary of opportunity:

Professor Susan Goodwin undertakes research on social policy, gender, and social change. She is engaged in collaborative research projects with a range of government, nongovernment and civil society organisations and contributes to local, national and international policy processes. Her recent book with Carol Bacchi 'Poststructural Policy Analysis',outlines an innovative approach to policy analysis that has application across the full range of policy fields and governmental projects. In addition, she employs action research and participatory research methodologies in her work addressing poverty and disadvantage in communities in Australia and elsewhere. Sue teaches social policy in the undergraduate program and the Master of Policy Studies program, and supervises postgraduate research students undertaking projects on gender, social policy, poverty and inequality, and community capacity building.

Opportunity synopsis:

Research interests

Social structures, inequalities and social justice

• Gender relations and gender identity
• Social change

Social work and social policy

• Social policy

----------Current Research Projects----------

• Working from the ground up: participatory approaches to community development in low-income and public housing neighbourhoods. This work is based on a large ARC Linkage project with public housing residents in South Eastern Sydney. The model developed is being extended to other regions and Hong Kong (Hong Kong GRF 2017-2019).
• The good mother: interrogating class, gender, 'race' and motherhood. This ongoing research project is exploring contemporary constructions of mothering and motherhood in Australia.
• Research and policy capacity in non-government community service organisations. This project is exploring developments in the non-goverenment community sector in Australia and internationally.
• Collaborative social justice research practices. This project is exploring new institutional structures and practices for social justice impact.