PEOPLE
Current Board Members
Dr Jacques Boulet: Dr Jacques Boulet: early inspiration by living with Romani and Kenyan communities shaped lifelong university teaching of social work, social research and community development in Belgium, Germany, USA and Australia. Former Ass Pro RMIT Social Work. PhD dissertation about structure/agency theoretical underpinning for community development. Ongoing networks with Latino, European, Indian Sub Continent and Chinese university research centres. Facilitating social work curriculum development in Hong Kong and India. Vision for a suburban university to continue the mission of transformative education eclipsed by Australia’s neo-liberal cultural revolution
Dr Olga Bursian: Lectures in social policy, welfare law, rights and ethics and welfare state formations at Monash University Gippsland. Social Work trained with practice in youth work, social policy and research on community services industry, management in family support and migrant resource centre and community development for culturally diverse communities. Research interests young people and employment; family/work nexus. comparative welfare states, multiculturalism, gender studies, cross cultural epistemologies and gender issues; post colonial theory; community development; decolonising and feminist research methods.
PhD: Uncovering the well springs of migrant women’s agency: Connecting with Australian public infrastructure
Masters of Social Work Minor thesis: A Study of the Formation of the Victorian Youth Guarantee.
Dr Kristin Diemer: Twenty years of quantitative and qualitative research experience across government, local community and academia. Periodically lecturing in self and identity, photographic representations of life and research methodology at Oases Graduate School, as well as family studies at the Australian Catholic University, she currently holds a Post Doc Research Fellowship at Melbourne University for the Victorian Family Violence Reform Research Program. As a sociologist, she specialises in research methodology and SPSS data analysis within the arena of family violence, sexual assault and child abuse, working with both large government department database and smaller agency specific case files. Research interests include vulnerable communities, multiculturalism, self and society, photography and feminist research methods.
PhD: Romantic Love in Everyday Life: An exploration of its social construction in contemporary Western society
Dr Rob Nabben: 20 years in research, policy, academia and youth services, including 10 years as Lecturer RMIT Youth Studies. Social research expertise in evaluation and the development of quality systems for community development. Past projects focus on community inclusion for marginalised groups, using a whole-of-community approach, often in collaboration with the Municipal Association of Victoria. Current training and education role in Borderlands Cooperative and oases’ Community Learning and Research Centre.
PhD - ‘People’s revolution or government imposition. Working the spaces between the contradictions of community development’
Master of Social Science - ‘More than managerialism? – The development of quality management systems in local government youth services’.
And info coming soon about:
David Buller
Dr Phil Connors
John Mackenzie