This is a responsive program of research and impact activities which aims to address the social harms intersecting as homelessness.
The Homelessness ColLAB brings together researchers (staff, research degree students), community and government sectors at state and national level. We centre on engagement with lived experience, frontline service providers and policymakers and are currently running research projects, research-led advocacy and public events across all our agenda areas. The Homelessness ColLAB leads the University of Tasmania's membership of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute which funds the National Housing Research Program, including additional supports for higher degree research students.
Our strategic research and impact agenda is focused on
Policy, systems and services
Informing the design of innovative social policy, systems and services.
Children and young people
Supporting a shift to early intervention for children and young people.
Women
Addressing gender-specific dimensions of homelessness for women and their children
Rough sleepers and people exiting institutional settings
Engaging in complex care service innovation.
Our objectives
- To evolve as a ‘what works’ research hub for homelessness prevention and early intervention in Tasmania and beyond.
- To respond to community knowledge needs and translate our research for policy change, service design, practice improvement and education.
- To collaboratively mobilise research knowledge, lived experience and policy and practice expertise to keep people supported in place and at home.
How we work
- We engage in research that contributes to system and service design, advocacy, public education, political campaigns and cross-sector collaboration.
- We support professional pathway HDR candidates and create HDR projects for cross-sector knowledge exchange.
- Our work is shaped by an intellectual toolkit which draws from the sociology of inequality, critical social policy, ethics and social welfare, place studies, vulnerability studies, post-structural feminism, critical social work and more.
- We mobilise a methodological toolkit which draws from contemporary urban ethnography, qualitative methods which focus on lived experience and life story, creative and audio-visual methods, narrative analysis, discourse analysis and mixed, longitudinal and evaluation methods and more.
- We specialise in trauma-informed research practice, including high-risk research governance for work with vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations which prioritises researcher and participant well-being.
Collaborate with us
If you have project or research ideas you would like to discuss or would like further information about the work we are currently doing, please get in touch with:
- Homelessness ColLAB lead, Associate Professor Catherine Robinson; or
- Research Fellow, Dr Miriam Glennie.
Research and community dialogue
Upcoming event
Broken Home Exhibition
Dates: 18.10.2024 – 9.11.2024
Location: Moonah Arts Centre, 27 Albert Road, Moonah TAS 7009
Broken Home examines concepts of territory and identity in connection to domestic spaces. It explores the relationship between these spaces and the effect they have on our evolution of self. This body of work and the stories that it tells draw parallels between personal archaeology and the subjective way people create a “home”. Donna Bergshoeff is a photo-based artist with an inquiring interest into identity and it’s ever fluctuating role in our lives.
Generations and Housing Symposium
The Australian Sociological Association
Date and time: Monday 25 November 2024, 8:45am - 5:30pm (AWST)
Location: Online or in-person (Edith Cowan University, Mount Lawley Campus, Western Australia)
Past events
Sandy Duncanson Social Justice Lecture 2024
An annual public lecture raising awareness of social justice issues amongst University of Tasmania students and staff, legal practitioners and other professionals, and across the wider Tasmanian community.
Unaccompanied: Children homeless alone
Associate Professor Catherine Robinson delivers the Sandy Duncanson Social Justice Lecture, which explores how we might eradicate homelessness for unaccompanied children in Tasmania and beyond.
Catherine, delivering the Sandy Duncanson Social Justice Lecture and in dialogue with Acting Commissioner for Children and Young People Tasmania
Homelessness Week 2024 | Monday, 5 August - Sunday, 11 August
An annual event to raise awareness of the impact of homelessness and the solutions needed to end homelessness.
The unfair divide: Disadvantage faced by young people who are homeless
On Tuesday 6 August 2024, Catherine Robinson, Associate Professor in Communities and Social Justice, and lead of the Homelessness ColLAB, was part a discussion about Mission Australia's latest Youth Survey report, with Mission Australia's Marion Bennett, Executive of Practice, Evidence and Impact.
Also hear from Mission Australia service managers who work with young people experiencing homelessness, and from young people themselves.
This public event was a collaboration between the Homeless ColLAB and community partners Colony 47, City of Hobart and Youth ARC. Marking #YHMD2024, we brought couches into Elizabeth Street Mall in Hobart, drawing community and media attention to the hidden nature of unaccompanied child and youth homelessness, and joined calls for a National Child and Youth Homelessness Strategy.
Hosted by the Homelessness ColLAB, this workshop involved an in-conversation style discussion between Carmel Hobbs (Trauma-informed Practice Lab), Ash Barnes (Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre) and Catherine Robinson (Homelessness ColLAB) about researcher vulnerability and the risks experienced by researchers in the design, conduct and dissemination of research on challenging social issues, such as homelessness, abuse, domestic violence and sexual harm. The workshop brought together the collective expertise from the panel and audience about practical strategies to keep ourselves and research participants safe when undertaking higher-risk research.
Hosted by the Homelessness ColLAB in partnership with Documentary Australia’s Impact Producer Program, Hobart Women’s Shelter and Shelter Tasmania this event involved a public screening of Under Cover and panel conversation on women’s homelessness with Director Sue Thomson, Janet Saunders (CEO, Hobart Women’s Shelter) and Pattie Chugg (CEO, Shelter Tasmania).
Held during Homelessness Week with the support of City of Hobart, this symposium launched new research on rough sleeping in Tasmania being undertaken through the Homelessness ColLAB. The event brought together Kimbra Parker (Manager Community Programs and Social Recovery Coordinator, City of Hobart), Ewan Higgs (Housing Services Program Manager, Hobart City Mission), Hanna Richardson (Safe Space Program Leader, Hobart City Mission), Robert Moreton (Managing Director, Moreton Group) and Don McCrae (CEO, JusTas) for initial conversations about gaps in current policy and service for rough sleepers in Tasmania, including the need for an extreme weather protocol and strengthened health and multi-agency care responses.
Research student community and capacity building
Vulnerability and Practical Justice Reading Group
This facilitated small group is committed to monthly reading and reflecting together. Our focus is on interdisciplinary feminist/post-structural problematisations of vulnerability and the ethical, political and practical roadblocks to social, policy and political change that we encounter in our research.
Open now to all HDR students across the College of Arts, Law and Education (CALE). If you are a CALE HDR student at any stage of your research journey, please get in touch with group coordinator Catherine Robinson to join (catherine.robinson@utas.edu.au).
Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI)
Learn about AHURI research capacity building, including Postgraduate Scholarship Top-ups, Postgraduate Symposiums and Postdoctoral Fellowships.
The Australian Sociological Association (TASA)
Learn about TASA Postgraduate Members.
Current research
Please see staff profiles linked below for further project information and relevant publications.
- Kathleen Flanagan, Richard Eccleston, Stephen Glackin, Wendy Stone, Emma MacDonald
Using a participatory research methodology, this AHURI-funded project explores the optimal administration arrangements for the delivery of efficient, effective housing policy within a federal system, taking account the surrounding economic, social and political context, now and into the future.
- Alan Morris, Hal Pawson, Andrew Clarke, Cameron Parsell, Lynda Cheshire, Jan Idle, Catherine Robinson
This Australian Research Council Linkage Grant investigates the lived experience and impacts of waiting on applicants for social housing. For further information see Waithood: The experience of waiting for social housing.
- Debbie Faulkner, Jos Baltra-Ulloa, Kate Vincent, Helen Barrie, Nancy Arthur, Romy Wasserman R, Karien Dekker, Iris Levin
This AHURI-funded project investigates the multiple ways in which precarity in the migration status of Temporary Visa Holders can translate into vulnerabilities in work, health, and housing.
- Deb Batterham, Kathleen Flanagan, Catherine Robinson, Chris Hartley, Emma Barnes, Miriam Glennie
This AHURI-funded, mixed-method project examines the prevalence and impacts of workplace trauma exposure in housing and homelessness services in Australia. It will develop a framework of key principles as well as concrete options to reduce and mitigate workplace trauma exposure in these sectors.
Funded by the Tasmanian Department of Education, Children and Young People, this project will evaluate the appropriateness and effectiveness of a pilot care model for unaccompanied homeless children aged 12-15 in southern Tasmania.
- Catherine Robinson, Carmel Hobbs, Miriam Glennie, Cassandra Thoars, Wendy Stone, Deb Batterham, Joel McGregor
Through an investigation of need, service gaps and strengths, and a review of national and international evidence of effective service design, this AHURI-funded project identifies what’s needed and what works for a strategic continuum of supported accommodation provision for unaccompanied children and young people aged 12-24 who experience homelessness in Australia.
This study will provide understanding of the impacts of the program on participants and provide new knowledge about the role an intensive, holistic program can have on the lives of young people who have experienced or are at risk of experiencing homelessness.
- Samantha Lombard; HDR supervision team: Catherine Robinson, Helen Chick
This doctoral thesis investigates the intersection of homelessness and educational detachment, and examines how multi-agency responses could best be coordinated to both reduce children and young people's risk of homelessness and support re-engagement in education.
This project supports the development of Tasmania’s whole-of-government strategy to prevent and better respond to child sexual abuse. It presents a synopsis and comparative analysis of child sexual abuse definitions from other relevant government strategies ad policy documents. Funded by the Tasmanian Department of Premier and Cabinet.
This comparative review of strategies to prevent and better respond to child sexual abuse is intended to support the development of the whole-of-government child sexual abuse reform strategy in Tasmania. It presents a synopsis and analysis of government strategies and policy approaches focused on tackling child sexual abuse from relevant jurisdictions. Funded by Department of Premier and Cabinet.
- Libby Richardson; HDR supervision team: Catherine Robinson, Kathleen Flanagan, Tina Kostecki
This is project is a qualitative exploration of women’s experiences of homelessness during pregnancy in Tasmania, including experiences seeking housing, health and social services. Informed by social work practice, this project will draw on emerging evidence of service innovation, and produce new place-based empirical evidence to explore the housing, health and social service innovations that can best meet the needs of this group in Tasmania.
- Jasmine Briere; HDR supervision team: Peta Cook, Tina Kostecki
This research project will explore alternative housing projects for older Australian women, with a specific focus on women-only accommodation options. The project will explore the unique factors impacting on why older women seek and live in women’s only housing and communities.
- Chris Hartley, Catherine Robinson, Deb Batterham, Chris Mason, Kylie Valentine, Emma Barnes
This AHURI-funded project will review public health responses to homelessness and the collaboration between public health agencies and homelessness services during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will recommend how engagement between public health and homelessness services can be strengthened into the future
Funded through the University of Tasmania Partnerships for Impact Rough Sleepers Initiative, this research is examining policy and service approaches to rough sleeping, or primary homelessness, in Tasmania. The project explores whether existing approaches are working to prevent rough sleeping and meet the needs of rough sleepers in order to identify opportunities for policy and service strengthening into the future.
- Ebba Herrlander Birgerson; HDR supervision team: Angela Dwyer, Nicole Asquith, Catherine Robinson
This doctoral thesis will explore policing approaches to reducing homelessness and crime. Focusing on housing instability and homelessness as crucial issues in desistance from crime, key areas to explore include cross-agency collaboration and increasing police awareness of housing support. The thesis will also consider the implementation of desistance and housing strategies in policy.
Do you need help or additional resources?
In Tasmania, key housing, homelessness, child safety and domestic violence services include:
- Housing Connect
1800 800 588 - Strong Families, Safe Kids Advice and Referral Line
1800 000 123 - National Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Counselling Service
1800 Respect (1800 737 732)
Our community sector peaks provide further information and advice:
For teaching, learning and classroom resources for primary, secondary, tertiary and community settings: