Dr Sharlene Nipperess is an associate professor in social work at RMIT University, Melbourne. She is a qualified and experienced social worker and has worked as a social work educator and researcher for over twenty years. Her teaching and research focuses on critical approaches to practices that protect and promote human rights and work towards social and environmental justice. Sharlene has published on social work ethics, critical multicultural and human rights-based practice, environmental justice and the role and impact of technology in social work. She engages in collaborative and participatory research primarily in the areas of migration and displacement, mental distress, disability and family and carer lived experiences, and housing precarity and homelessness. Sharlene has co-edited three books Practice skills in social work and welfare (2023), Critical multicultural practice in social work (2019) and Doing critical social work (2016) and is a member of the Design and Social Context College Human Ethics Advisory Network.
As a social work educator, Sharlene teaches across the Bachelor and Master of Social Work programs, specialising in learning and teaching in the first year. She currently teaches History and trends in social work, an introductory social work course, and Ethics and reflexive practice, an interdisciplinary ethics course, both in the first year of the Bachelor programs. Sharlene supervises higher degree research in the social work and human services disciplines.
From 2017 to 2020, Sharlene was the Program Manager for BH105 Bachelor of Social Work (honours) and BH106 Bachelor of Social Work (honours) / Bachelor of Social Science (psychology).
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.
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