SWSD 2014 Joint World Conference on Social Work, Education and Social Development

Professor Margaret Alston AOM

Monash University, Australia

Theme: Creating sustainable and safe physical environments

Professor Margaret Alston, B.Soc. Stud (Syd), Dip. Comp. Applic. (RMIHE), M. Litt (UNE), PhD (UNSW), is Head of Department of Social Work and the Director of the Gender, Leadership and Social Sustainability (GLASS) research unit at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.  Prior to commencing at Monash in 2008 she was Professor of Social Work and Human Services and Director of the Centre for Rural Social Research at Charles Sturt University. She is an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney and at Charles Sturt University. She has served on a number of Boards including as National President of the Foundation for Australian Agricultural Women. She is Chair of the Australian Council of Heads of Schools of Social Work and has been an advisor to the socio-economic working group for the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Health Workforce Australia working group on teaching. In 2008 she was appointed to the Australian delegation attending the commission for the Status of Women meeting in New York. In 2009, 2007 and 2003 she spent time as a visiting expert in the Gender Division of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation in Rome. She has published widely in the field of rural gender and rural social issues. She has also acted as a gender expert for UN–Habitat in Kenya in 2009 and UNEP in 2012-13. She is currently researching the gendered impacts of climate change in Australia, the Pacific and Bangladesh. She is publishing three books in 2014 – one on Bangladesh, another on violence against women and women’s activism in South Asia and a third on eco-Social Work. She has been a keynote speaker at a number of national and international conferences over the last several years and is sought out for media commentary on the rural social condition, and on climate change and gender issues.

She received her Medal of the Order of Australia in 2010 for services to social work and the advancement of women, particularly in rural areas.