Dr Vanessa McDermott is a Senior Lecturer and Postgraduate Coordinator in the School of Business at UNSW Canberra, University of New South Wales. She holds a PhD in Sociology from The Australian National University (ANU), with her doctoral thesis entitled Conceptualising Legitimacy, Moral Panics and Performance Enhancing Drugs: Crisis? Whose Crisis?, First Class Honours in Sociology from ANU on Court in the Middle – Gender Relations, the Family Court and Child Support Agency, and a Bachelor of Arts in Development Studies and Sociology from ANU. Prior to joining UNSW Canberra in 2020, she was a Research Fellow in the Energy Pipeline Cooperative Research Centre at ANU and subsequently at RMIT University.

Adopting a sociological perspective, Dr McDermott investigates decision-making in governance and regulatory frameworks, corporate governance and organisational culture in private and public sectors, behaviour change communication and management, and their impacts on legitimacy, accountability, and trust. Her work examines how such frameworks increase risk and compliance burdens, contributing to inequality and poor outcomes, particularly in worker safety within civil construction, anti-doping policies for elite athletes, community safety, and urban development. She conducts evaluations of public and corporate sector programs and initiatives, co-designing projects that translate research into policy recommendations for enhancing well-being, workplace and community safety, and behaviour change. Notable publications include her book The War on Drugs in Sport: Moral Panics and Organizational Legitimacy (Routledge, 2015), co-authored Developing Government Policy Capability: Policy Work, Project Management, and Knowledge Practices (2017), journal articles such as Passionate projects: practitioner reflections on emotion management (International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 2022), Reconceptualising merit in the public sector: Introducing a new typology (Australian Journal of Public Administration, 2025), and The case for a social science of drugs in sport (Sport in Society, 2009). Awards include the 2011 ACT Sports Research Award in the Open Category and Best Paper Award Runner Up for “We’re still hitting things”: the effectiveness of third party processes for pipeline strike prevention at the 11th International Pipeline Conference (2016). She has contributed to grants from the Australian Department of Defence, World Anti-Doping Agency, Project Management Institute, and National Mental Health Commission, influencing defence gender inclusion, mental health workplaces, and anti-doping legitimacy. Dr McDermott supervises research in project management, sociology, corporate governance, workplace health and safety, and doping in sports.

Professional Email: v.mcdermott@unsw.edu.au