Rate My Professor Margaret Alston

Professor Margaret Alston, AM OAM, is a Professor of Social Work in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences, College of Human and Social Futures, at the University of Newcastle, joining in 2018. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of New South Wales. Her career includes 21 years at Charles Sturt University as an academic and researcher, followed by her role as Professor of Social Work and Head of Department at Monash University, where she established the Gender, Leadership and Social Sustainability (GLASS) research unit in 2008. Internationally, Alston served as a gender expert for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, resident in Rome in 2003, 2007, and 2009; as the Australian delegate to the Commission on the Status of Women in 2008; as a UN-Habitat advisor on climate change impacts on global cities in 2009; and as a gender expert for UNEP in Geneva from 2012 to 2013 training field staff. She is a past Chair of the Australian Heads of Schools of Social Work and a Foundation Fellow of the Australian College of Social Work appointed in 2011.

Alston's research focuses on gender and climate change, environmental disasters, rural women, social sustainability, and violence against women, with fields of research in social work (70%) and sociology of gender (30%). Key publications include Women and Climate Change in Bangladesh (2015), based on a three-year study; Social Work and Disasters: A Handbook for Practice (2019); Research for Social Workers: An Introduction to Methods, third edition (2019); Social Work: Fields of Practice, third edition (2018); Ecological Social Work: Towards Sustainability (2016); and Breaking Through the Grass Ceiling (2014). She has received the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2021 for services to social work education and research, and the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in 2010 for services to rural women and to social work. At Newcastle, she re-established the GLASS research unit to advance gender and social sustainability research. Alston has delivered keynote addresses, including at the Australian Climate conference in 2016 and the women, agriculture and environment symposium at Penn State University in 2016.