Dr BJ Newton
Lecturer

Dr BJ Newton

BSW/BA (Hons) UNSW, PhD (Social Policy/ Social Work) UNSW

Arts,Design & Architecture
School of Social Sciences

BJ Newton, PhD (Social Work/ Social Policy), University of NSW, BA (hons. In sociology), University of New South Wales, B Social Work, University of New South Wales.

BJ Newton is a proud Wiradjuri woman and mother to three young children. She is a Scientia Senior Research Fellow based at the Social Policy Research Centre within UNSW Sydney. BJ specialises in qualitative inquiry, Indigenous research methods and child protection research and policy.

In 2020, BJ was the lead Chief Investigator awarded an Australian Research Council Indigenous Discovery grant: Bring Them Home Keep Them Home: charting the experiences, successful pathways and outcomes of Aboriginal families whose children have been restored from Out-of-Home Care. This is a four-year research project running from mid-2021 to mid-2025 in partnership with Aboriginal organisations in NSW.

BJ is also a Chief Investigator on two Australian Research Council Linkage projects:

  • Engaging Families in Early Education
  • Missing Girls: From childhood runaways to criminalised women

BJ has extensive experience working on a range of child protection and domestic and family violence commissioned research for NSW DCJ, and multiple projects for the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse. BJ was the inaugural Associate Dean (Indigenous) of the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, a position held from January 2021- August 2022 when she accepted the Scientia research fellowship.

Phone
+61 2 9385 4013

Selected grants:

Bring them home, keep them home: charting the experiences, successful pathways and outcomes of Aboriginal families whose children have been restored from Out-of-Home Care (ARC Discovery Indigenous- Lead Chief Investigator)

Families on the margins: Success in early childhood education in the context of disadvantage, Australian Research Council Linkage Project (ARC Linkage- co-Chief Investigator)

Missing girls: From childhood runaway to criminalised women (ARC Linkage- co-Chief Investigator)

Understanding the influential factors and outcomes of restoration from Out-Of-Home Care for Aboriginal children (Funded by NSW DCJ- Lead Chief Investigator)

Pathways of Change: optimising the mental health of children in OOHC (Funded by NSW DCJ- co-Chief Investigator)

Mothers and children with disability using violence prevention and early intervention services (Funded by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS)- co-Chief Investigator)

My Research Supervision

Jodie Kidd, Scientia PhD Scholar- Examining the Use of Trauma in Public Policy Aimed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people

Wendy Jopson, Scientia PhD Scholar- Aboriginal Cultural Governance in research

Delilah MacGillivray, Scientia PhD Scholar- Redefining Indigenous Self-determination in Australian Public Policy using a family-focused approach

Nellie Pollard-Wharton, Masters in Public Health- Co-designed Aboriginal led community solutions to prevent unintentional child injury

 

My Teaching

2019 Course convenor- Aboriginal People and Social Work (SOCW2100), Social Work Program, School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney