Decolonising | Social Work Discoveries

Welcome back to the Social Work Discoveries podcast.

Today’s guest researcher is Dr B.J. Newton. B.J. is a proud Wiradjuri woman and a Scientia Senior Research Fellow based at the Social Policy Research Centre within the University of NSW, Sydney. Dr Newton specialises in Indigenous research methods and child protection research and policy. Her research focuses on working in partnership with Aboriginal organisations to build evidence and support Aboriginal families interfacing with child protection systems.

B.J.’s current research, ‘Bring them home, keep them home’ investigates the rates, outcomes, and experiences of successful and sustainable restoration for Aboriginal children in out-of-home care. She has extensive experience working on a range of child protection and domestic and family violence commissioned research, and multiple projects for the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse.

In this conversation, you’ll hear B.J. talking all about child restoration practices in Australia, Aboriginal Community-led approaches to research and social change, Indigenous research methods, and so much more.

I hope you get as much from this conversation, as I did. It was an absolute pleasure!

Ben.

To reach out to B.J. or to follow her work, please use the following link to her UNSW research profile:

https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/bj-newton

Hello Social Work Discoveries Listeners,

I’m so pleased to be able to introduce Dr Sharlotte Tusasiirwe, author of Decolonising & Re-imagining Social Work in Africa: Alternative Epistemologies and Practice Models available for purchase through Routledge, and co-author of Re-imagining Social Work: Towards Creative Practice, with Professor Jim Ife and Dr Rimple Mehta. Their book is now available through Cambridge University Press.

Dr Tusasiirwe is a lecturer in social work in the School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University. After completing a bachelor’s degree in social work at Makerere University in Uganda and a master’s degree in social work and human rights at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Sharlotte is very interested in researching social work education, and her PhD through Western Sydney University was focused on how to decolonise social work education and practice to create a culturally appropriate and contextually relevant profession. She has researched areas of decolonisation and indigenisation; African knowledges and obuntu/ubuntu philosophies; culturally appropriate practice; ageing and age-old wisdom; and community-led initiatives, mental health and parenthood of migrant parents in diaspora. She is also a co-editor for the forthcoming book Ubuntu Philosophy and Decolonising Social Work Fields of Practice in Africa (Routledge, 2024).

We hope you enjoy the conversation!

Ben.

You can find Dr Tusasiirwe’s books and other publications using the following link:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ANtUJngAAAAJ&hl=en

Share this:

Share this: