ProfessorSusan Heward-Belle

Professor Heward-Belle is an award-winning educator whose teaching is grounded in her extensive frontline practice and shaped by a strong commitment to trauma-informed pedagogy. Her teaching spans social work practice, domestic and family violence, child protection, and working with families experiencing complex and intersecting vulnerabilities.

A distinctive feature of her educational work is her attention to how students can engage safely and critically with distressing material. She has developed pedagogical approaches that move beyond individual "trigger warnings" toward collective, participatory strategies for learning about violence and trauma, work recognised with a Best Conference Abstract award and supported through Trauma-Informed Educational Interventions grants. She also foregrounds survivor-led knowledge and lived-experience expertise in the classroom, connecting her research directly to the preparation of the next generation of practitioners.

Her contribution to teaching has been recognised with the Social Work Educator of the Year Award from the Australia and New Zealand Social Work and Welfare Education and Research organisation, and a Faculty Teaching Excellence Award. She is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy and a graduate of the Sydney Educational Fellowship Program. Professor Heward-Belle supervises a substantial cohort of higher degree research students working across domestic and family violence, child protection, out-of-home care and child sexual exploitation, and has examined doctoral theses nationally.

She currently teaches the following undergraduate and postgraduate courses:

·       SCWK 2012: Social work with children and young people

·       SCWK 4003& 4011: Violence against women and children

·       SCWK 5011: Violence against women

·       SCWK 5008: Reimagining child and family social work