Alexa Ridgway

Dr Alexandra Ridgway is a Lecturer in Criminology and Justice Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia where she teaches into the Master of Public Policy. Alexandra currently teaches the following subjects: Evidence, Policy and Practice (POLI1095); Ethics, Values and Public Policy (POLI1065) and Integrated Policy and Research Project (POLI1100).   

 

As a sociologist and criminologist, Alexandra uses her research to examine family, personal and intimate life with a particular focus on family breakdown and divorce; family and sexual violence; and grief and loss. Alexandra’s work primarily examines these issues within the context of migration. Underpinning Alexandra’s research is a deep interest in the way in which different forms of law and regulation shape these personal experiences. More recently she has turned her attention towards the increasing role of technology, including AI, in regulatory systems and services and how this too has the power to influence human practices and relationships. Her work can be found in various publications such as Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, British Journal of Criminology, New Media and Society, Gender Work and Organization, Australian Feminist Studies and Population, Space and Place.

 

Alexandra is currently working with Dr Joseph van Buuren on a research project titled Visualising Public Legal Information: Using Graphic Narratives to Address Community Legal Information Need. This project is in partnership with ARC Justice, a community legal centre based in regional Victoria (Bendigo and Shepparton), with the project funded by a Victorian Law Foundation (VLF) Everyday Legal Grant. 

 

In terms of previously funded projects, in 2025, Alexandra was part of the team (with Joann Cattlin, Dist Prof Lisa M.Given and Prof Falk Scholer) who delivered the workshop, Transdiscplinarity for Socially Responsible Artifical Intelligence: Aligning Expertise in Social Sciences and Computing Research funded by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia's Workshop Grants. She was also a member of the research team behind the project ArtificialIntelligence (AI)-Generated Image-Based Sexual ​​Abuse: Prevalence, Attitudes and Impacts funded by Google from 2024-5. 

 

In 2025, Alexandra was awarded a Dean's Rising Star Award for the School of Global Urban and Social Studies (GUSS) at RMIT University. In the same year she received the 2025 Social Equity Research Centre's (SERC) Early Career Researcher's Best Paper Award for the paper, Time Will Tell: A Temporal Analysis of Victim-Survivor’s Formal Support-Seeking for Co-occurring Family Violence and Sexual Harm, which she first authored alongside Dr Gemma Hamilton, Prof Anastasia Powell and Prof Georgina Heydon. Alexandra's work has received other acknowledgments such as a commendation in 2023 by the Australian Death Studies Society (ADSS) for her paper, Love Loss and a Doctorate: An autoethnography of grieving while writing a PhD; highly commended paper presentation prize for Centering Migrant Voices: Problem Centred Interviewing as Human-Centred Interviewing at the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre (MMIC)'s New Generation Symposium in 2021; first prize for her poster presentation Rise Like a Phoenix: Migrant Women's Habitus After Divorce at the Bourdieu Study Group's Biennial Conference in 2018 and the ANZSOC Student Paper Prize in 2013 for her Master's paper Talking Trauma.

 

In 2025, Alexandra was awarded a writing fellowship with Australian Policy and History and the Centre for Contemporary Histories.    

 

Currently, Alexandra is the Chairperson of SHAPE Futures EMCR Futures (2026-) where she was Co-Deputy Chair from 2024-5. She was also the Thematic Leader of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA)'s Crime and Governance Group with Dr Joseph van Buuren from 2024-2025. Alexandra is proud to be a moderator with the blog "The Power to Persuade". 

 

At RMIT, Alexandra is a member of the Social Equity Research Centre (SERC) and Centre for Human-AI Information Environments (CHAI). Externally, she is a member of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA); Australian New Zealand Society of Criminology (ANZSOC); Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA); Australian Death Studies Society (ADSS) and Australian Women's History Network (AWHN).