Rate My Professor Kathomi Gatwiri

Professor Kathomi Gatwiri is a Professor in Social Work and Head of Discipline, Social Work, in the College of Education, Psychology and Social Work at Flinders University. She is an ARC DECRA Fellow and a nationally recognised scholar, researcher, and leader whose work bridges academic research and community impact. Gatwiri holds a PhD in Social Work from Flinders University, a Masters of Counselling & Psychotherapy, a BASW with First Class Honours, and a Mini-MBA from Melbourne Business School. Her career includes founding and directing Healing Together, a service providing culturally affirming therapeutic support for people impacted by racial trauma, and Femicide Count Kenya, a platform documenting murdered Kenyan women. She served four years as President of the Australian Women and Gender Studies Association and is a member of the advisory committee for the Australian Human Rights Commission's Racism@Uni national study. Gatwiri leads one of the most diverse teams in an Australian university, spearheading strategic direction in curriculum design, teaching and research innovation, postgraduate supervision, community engagement, operational planning, staffing, resource management, and quality assurance processes including accreditation reviews and curriculum renewal.

Her research specializations encompass decolonising methodologies, anti-racist pedagogies, racial trauma, identity, migranthood, and experiences of minoritised people, particularly those assigned categories of difference in Australia. She developed the Racial Dignity Theory and Racial Dignity Framework, tools for understanding racism as an assault on human dignity, adopted across organisational settings. Gatwiri has produced over 100 traditional and non-traditional research outputs, including the books African Womanhood and Incontinent Bodies and Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia, and recent publications such as 'A love letter to Black people or anti-white propaganda? Black (non-Indigenous) people's reflections on the role of the #BlackLivesMatter movement in Australia' (2025, Australian Journal of Social Issues), 'African migrants’ perception and attitude towards COVID-19 pandemic and its public health response in New South Wales, Australia: a qualitative study' (2025, Discover Public Health), 'Reversing the Gaze: An Autoethnographic Critique of Transracial–Transnational Adoption to Australia' (2026, Child and Family Social Work), and 'Depression, psychological distress, and coping strategies among African migrants in Australia: a cross-sectional web-based study' (2026, BMC Psychiatry). She has secured over $1.5 million in competitive research funding since completing her PhD. Major awards include Outstanding African-Australian Professional of the Year (2024), Vice-Chancellor's Award for Research Excellence and Outstanding Community Impact (2022), Vice-Chancellor Early Career Researcher Award (2019), Community Impact Award as Kenyan of the Year (2017), and John & Gwen Waters Excellence Award (2012). One of Australia’s leading Afro-diasporic scholars, her teaching emphasises trauma and resilience, decolonial identities, ethics and theory, grounded in decolonising practice, dignity-informed approaches, and culturally safe learning environments.