Ms Kerrie James

Kerrie James is a Lecturer of Social Work at the School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UNSW.  She is the Coordinator of the Master of Social Work (Counselling) program.

Kerrie's research is about domestic violence, trauma, refugees and family therapy. She is currently working on a project exploring the capacity of counselling organsiations to assess and manage potential lethality in domestic violence situations. She is completing a project which looked at the extent to which  domestic violence occurs in natural disasters. She has also published on working with refugees in urban environments and on conceptualising therapist’s skills in couple and family therapy. Her recent work also explored issues in teaching social work students about trauma and training refugee lay counsellors in India. 

In 1999, Kerrie received the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy Award for Distinguished Contributions to Australian Family Therapy. Prior to joining the University in 2005, Kerrie was the Clinical Director at Relationships Australia NSW.

Research Areas

Domestic violence: differences in men's versus women's violence, men's experience of their own violence (ARC Industry Award in 1996); issues of forgiveness and responsibility in family violence; domestic violence and refugees; prevention of lethality in domestic violence for counselling organisations; domestic violence in natural disasters; counselling training in refugee contexts.

Current Research Projects

• Developing psycho-social approaches to assist refugees who have experienced trauma and torture in Australia and in a number of overseas countries, including work with refugees from Burma, Somalia and Afghanistan in New Delhi, India (with the Centre for Refugee Research)
• Developing organisations' capacity to utilise screening and risk assessment for identifying potential homicide. (collaboration with the Centre for Gender-Related Violence Studies at UNSW)

Postgraduate Research Supervision

Areas of Supervision
Workplace education; family therapy in adolescent mental health; refugee women and 'survival sex', clergy sexual abuse.

Current Postgraduate Research Supervision Topics

• International Studies and Global Transformation, Survival-sex workers in India: an assessment of women’s health issues
• Recognition of prior learning in vocational education and training - its role in identity constructionand potential for personal transformation
• Parents' experience of mental health intervention in relation to their adolescent's admission to a psychiatric hospital 
• Clergys' inappropriate behaviour towards parishioners - analysis of complaints received over a ten year period.

Teaching

Teaching areas
Kerrie is the program convenor for the Masters of Counselling Social Work, coordinating and teaching in the six courses that comprise this degree. Kerrie also teaches students in the Masters of Couple and Family Therapy and in the Batchelor of Social Work program.

Current teaching
SOCW2003 Working with Individuals, Families and Groups 1
SOCW3002 Working with Individuals, Families and Groups 2
SOCW3008 Therapeutic and Community Responses to Trauma
SOCF5101 Relational Contexts of Practice
SOCF5102 Selected Practice Frameworks
SOCF5004 Contemporary Theory Issues
SOCF5006 Clinical studies C

Affiliation and Memberships

• Member, Australian Association of Social Workers
• Member, Australian Association of Family Therapists

Other Information

Reviewer for the following journals: International Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, Journal of Family Therapy, and Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy