Dr BJ Newton

BJ Newton, PhD (Social Work/ Social Policy), University of NSW, BA (hons. In sociology), University of New South Wales, B Social Work, University of New South Wales.

BJ Newton is a proud Wiradjuri woman and mother to three young children. She is a Scientia Senior Research Fellow based at the Social Policy Research Centre within UNSW Sydney. BJ specialises in qualitative inquiry, Indigenous research methods and child protection research and policy.

In 2020, BJ was the lead Chief Investigator awarded an Australian Research Council Indigenous Discovery grant: Bring Them Home Keep Them Home: charting the experiences, successful pathways and outcomes of Aboriginal families whose children have been restored from Out-of-Home Care. This is a four-year research project running from mid-2021 to mid-2025 in partnership with Aboriginal organisations in NSW.

BJ is also a Chief Investigator on two Australian Research Council Linkage projects:

• Engaging Families in Early Education
• Missing Girls: From childhood runaways to criminalised women

BJ has extensive experience working on a range of child protection and domestic and family violence commissioned research for NSW DCJ, and multiple projects for the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse. BJ was the inaugural Associate Dean (Indigenous) of the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, a position held from January 2021- August 2022 when she accepted the Scientia research fellowship.