Maree Higgins

Maree Higgins is a Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), affiliated with the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the School of Social Work. She serves as the Social Work Honours Program Convenor and is an Associate of the Australian Institute of Human Rights, with links to the Forced Migration Research Network, Kaldor Centre, and Gendered Violence Research Network.

Education:

• Doctor of Philosophy (Social Work), Australian Catholic University (ACU National)
• Bachelor of Social Work (Hons First Class), UNSW

Research Interests: Maree’s work centers on social justice, human rights, and contextualized lived experience, with a focus on refugee and migrant populations, disability studies, aged care, criminal justice reform, and participatory research methods. Her recent publications emphasize lived experience-led knowledge, co-design practices, and trauma-informed approaches.

Grants: She has secured funding for projects like Missing Girls: from childhood runaway to criminalised woman (2022–2025; $204,307) and Ethics and community-based participatory research in refugee studies (2019; $5,000).

Supervision: Maree supervises PhD candidates in areas such as intellectual disability and support needs, intimate partner violence, and border policy impacts on asylum seekers. Her completions include honors and master’s theses on autonomy in eating disorder treatment, technology-facilitated abuse, and Aboriginal women in maternity care.

Professional Engagement: She collaborates with organizations including STARTTS, Foundation House, Black Dog Institute, and Prince of Wales Hospital, while actively participating in Australian Heads of Schools of Social Work, National Field Educational Network, and African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific.