Katie Wright is an Associate Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University.
Her research is broadly concerned with social change and social justice. Grounded in the traditions of historical and cultural sociology, she conducts interdisciplinary research across three intersecting fields: i) activism and child rights; ii) public inquiries into institutional abuse; and iii) studies of psychologisation and ‘therapeutic culture’.
She is currently leading two major funded projects examining activism, child rights and child safety.
Reclaiming Child Rights: Activism, Public Inquiries and Social Change (2022-2025), funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), examines is an historical sociology of activism against institutional child abuse from the 1990s to the present. Professor Johanna Sköld, Linköping University, is co-Chief Investigator on the project, which examines the reform strategies, actions and rationales of activists before, during and after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. A core focus of the research is the mobilisation of child rights discourse in Australia and internationally. The project expects to generate new insights into child rights and activism, new understandings of a globally significant Royal Commission, and new knowledge on research translation. Expected outcomes and benefits include an archive of activist stories, a digital memory project, and a new model for public engagement with sensitive topics.
Creating Safer Futures: Raising Public Awareness of Child Sexual Abuse Among Young Adults through Digital Storytelling (2023-2025) is funded by the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse. It investigates how people can be encouraged to engage with difficult topics when the urge is to turn away. This will identify a new approach to raising awareness among young adults about child sexual abuse by creating a storytelling prototype suited to the digital media age. A key objective is to find novel ways of having difficult conversations about child sexual abuse as a preventative strategy, a tool of de-stigmatisation, and as a way of supporting victims and survivors and recognising their valuable contributions to child safety. This project brings together advocates, academics from sociology, history and psychology, and specialists from the creative industries.
Recently she completed a study of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and past Australian inquiries: Childhood Maltreatment and Late Modernity: Public Inquiries, Social Justice and Education. This work was supported by an ARC DECRA Fellowship. In addition, she is leading a study of the rise of historical abuse inquiries internationally: The Age of Inquiry: A Global Mapping of Institutional Abuse Inquiries.
Over the course of her career, Katie has conducted substantial research on young people and education. In 2012, she completed an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship (ARC APD) that investigated the history of guidance and counselling for children and adolescents and the role of psychology in educational reform. This was part of a larger ARC project, led by Professor Julie McLeod, Educating the Australian Adolescent. She has also conducted innovative research on the rise of concerns with youth wellbeing.
An ongoing focus of Katie’s research is the social and cultural effects of the spread of psychological knowledges and therapeutic discourses, both in the past and in the present. Her first book explored the impact of psychology in modernity through an analysis of the rise of ‘therapeutic culture’ in Australia and examination of the complex and contradictory effects of the growth of psychological knowledge more broadly.
Katie Wright 