Flourish 2021 Line Up Announcement: Kerryann Walsh

Introducing Kerryann Walsh

Kerryann is a Professor in the School of Early Childhood, Faculty of Education. Kerryann served as Co-Director of the $5.3M Australian government-funded Excellence in Research in Early Years Education (EREYE) Collaborative Research Network (CRN) involving QUT, Charles Sturt University, and Monash University (2013-2015).

She co-leads the Childhoods in Changing Contexts research group in QUT’s Faculty of Education. Kerryann is a pre-eminent Australian scholar in the interdisciplinary field of child maltreatment prevention and has researched and published in the areas of child protection policy, school-based child sexual abuse prevention programs, professionals’ reporting of child abuse and neglect, and training interventions for mandatory reporters.

In recognition of outstanding research quality and productivity Kerryann was awarded a QUT Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence (2015) and a QUT Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship (2010-2012). She has a strong record of effectively translating the results of her academic research into practical change to benefit communities.

Kerryann conducts research in the interdisciplinary field of child maltreatment prevention and has researched and published in the areas of online safety, child safe organisations, school-based child sexual abuse prevention programs, child protection policy, professionals’ reporting of child abuse and neglect, and training interventions for mandatory reporters.

Kerryann served as an Academic Advisor to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2015-2017) and led the research underpinning the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations. She has designed and conducted process and outcome evaluations of policies, programs, and practices using big data for the Australian Government Department of Social Services socio-legal study of mandatory reporting (with Prof Ben Mathews), auditing school system policy and curriculum for child sexual abuse prevention (with Prof Donna Berthelsen and Prof Jan Nicholson), conducting a multi-site cluster randomised controlled trial of a school-based child sexual abuse prevention program (with Prof Melanie Zimmer-Gembeck and A/Prof Diane Shanley); and evaluating education and training in a state-wide early childhood education and care system (with Prof Ann Farrell, Dr Megan Gibson, and Dr Mel Miller).

Kerryann is foundation member of QUT’s Childhood Adversity Research Program. She served as Co-Director of the $5.3M Australian government-funded Excellence in Research in Early Years Education (EREYE) Collaborative Research Network (CRN) involving QUT, Charles Sturt University, and Monash University (2013-2015), and as Co-Leader of the QUT Childhoods in Changing Contexts research group (2015-2019). Kerryann has served periods as Acting Head of School and currently holds the dual position of Faculty of Education Research Ethics Advisor and Faculty Research Integrity Advisor.

Learn More: https://www.bodysafetyaustralia.com.au/flourish-conference