Associate Professor Catherine Flynn
Head of Department
PhD, Practice Teaching Award, Post Grad Cert in Psychotherapeutic Studies, BSW (Hons)
catherine.flynn@monash.edu
+61 3 9903 2731
Profile
Catherine works in the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash University as an Associate Professor; she teaches Social Work Research in post-graduate courses. She is co-director of the Criminal Justice Research Consortium (CJRC).
Catherine completed her doctoral study examining the impact of maternal incarceration on adolescents in 2009. This has led to a body of work examining the needs and experiences of children when their primary carer is incarcerated, and advocacy about the needs of this hidden group in the community. Catherine is actively engaged in a range of collaborative research projects. Recent research includes: a national mapping of the needs of children who experience parental incarceration; learning from young people who have experienced the imprisonment of a parent – centring their expertise and voices; and exploring assessment feedback processes in the MSW. She supervises a number of PhD students, with topics ranging from parental arrest and responding to intimate partner violence, to exploring higher education – the experiences of international social work students, and how universities in PNG enact policies supporting inclusion.
Before joining the Social Work Department at Monash, Catherine worked in direct practice for ten years sharing her time between Australia and Northern Ireland. Her direct practice experiences and interests include: casework with young people at risk' and in contact with the juvenile justice system; young parents; and family violence. Her recent books include co-authored texts: Co-production and Criminal Justice (2022, with Drs Diana Johns, Maggie Hall, Claire Spivakovsky and Shelley Turner) and Research in social work and social care (2nd Ed, 2025) (with Assoc. Prof. Fiona McDermott).