Social Worker Leaders Celebrating Excellence - April 2025

The AASW PhD Webinar Series Social Work Leaders: Celebrating Excellence Webinar Series

This exciting and dynamic webinar will take place on Thursday the 10th of April from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm AEST

Free for members, join us to celebrate three outstanding AASW Members who have elevated the social work profession through their research. Presenters will commence the session with an introduction to their work and findings and discuss how their research intersects with real world practice, as well as exploring their own career journeys and experiences from their PhDs and beyond.

Register now!

Read more about your April PhD speakers below!

Chairperson:

Associate Professor Louise Whitaker

Associate Professor Louise Whitaker, Social Work and Community Welfare, Southern Cross University teacher is a member of the AASW National Research Committee. Her research examines mental health social work practice and pedagogy. Before joining academia in 2010, she practiced in mental health, women's health, Legal Aid and cancer workforce development. Dr Whitaker is particularly interested in acknowledging and capturing practice wisdom through practice based social work research.

Panellists

Associate Professor Carlie (Caroline) Atkinson

Carlie (Caroline) Atkinson is a Bundjalung and Yiman women and an accredited Social Worker with a PhD (Charles Darwin University, 2009). Associate Professor Atkinson is an international leader in complex and intergenerational trauma and strengths-based healing approaches in Indigenous Australia. She has focused her career on the interplay between trauma and violence in Aboriginal peoples in Australia, has developed extensive community and practice-based experience through her collaborative co-designed resource development work, and developed Australia’s first adapted, culturally sensitive, reliable and valid Aboriginal trauma assessment measure. She is the CEO of her family organisation, We Al-li, designing and coordinating delivery of Culturally Informed Trauma Integrated Healing Approaches (CITIHA) training and resource development for organisations and communities across Australia focusing on systems transformation and implementation. Associate Professor Atkinson is regularly invited to participate in policy and other high-level meetings for government and non-government organisations including expect advisory positions. She is an Associate Professor (honorary) at the University of Melbourne and Chief Investigator on the NHMRC funded Healing the Past by Nurturing the Future project the MRFF Replanting the Birthing Trees national project. Associate Professor Atkinson is also the founder of the Northern Rivers Community Healing Hub, an Indigenous Framework response to the catastrophic floods in the Northern Rivers in 2022.

Dr Tracey Harris

As an organisational design specialist, Tracey has worked in clinical practice, executive and leadership roles throughout her career. She has been a senior ministerial advisor to both state and federal ministers and members of Parliament where she was lead significant policy reforms in the areas of forensic mental health and housing. Tracey has also provided lectureship and management of the field education program at the Australian Catholic University. As the CEO of Amovita International, she leads a team of social workers both across Australia and internationally. She provides supervision for hundreds of professionals nationally and consulting services through Amovita’s Global Strategy Division. Tracey completed her PhD with Griffith University where she developed an evidence-based instrument to evaluate social work supervision capability. She is an international author on leadership excellence and neuroscience with Routledge and is crime fiction author.

Dr Josy Thomas

Dr Josy Thomas is a mental health specialised social worker with over 30 years’ experience in the community services sector, including statutory child protection, family violence, child safety, and trauma-informed clinical mental health practice. He has extensive knowledge of the detrimental impact of family violence, child abuse, neglect, and trauma on the development of children and their later adult lives. For the past 18 years in Australia, he has predominantly worked with vulnerable children and young people aged 0–18 years and their families.

Currently, Dr Thomas serves as a Specialist Family Violence Advisor in the Mental Health & Wellbeing Specialist Services Division at Eastern Health. His role involves capacity building of the mental health workforce through providing specialist family violence expertise, education, and advice on identifying, recognising, and responding to family violence using the MARAM framework and integrating it into clinical practice. He also provides secondary consultations to mental health clinicians concerning consumers experiencing or perpetrating family violence and assists in identifying related risks and devising strategies to mitigate those risks for individual consumers and their families.

Dr Thomas obtained a master’s degree in social work, an MPhil Degree (clinical) in Psychiatric Social Work, and a Diploma in Statutory Child Protection before completing his PhD Degree (Mental Health Social Work) at Monash University, Melbourne. He began his PhD research in India, completed data collection, and then migrated to Australia, where he transferred his PhD study to Monash University and completed it in 2017.

With a passion for making a difference in the lives of vulnerable and disadvantaged people, Dr Thomas works from a strong social justice perspective. He has demonstrated knowledge and skills across a broad range of community service areas and stakeholder engagement. While his background is rooted in professional social work, his practical experience shapes his approach to critical interventions, supported by his specialised expertise in mental health. His areas of interest include early intervention and prevention programs, working with vulnerable children and families, and addressing issues related to family violence and mental health.