Dr Alison Morehead

I am a Visiting Fellow in the School of Sociology.

Most of my career has been in the federal public service, including working for over 15 years in the Senior Executive Service (at the SES Band 2 level) across several Australian government departments/portfolios. 

At the SES Band 2 level I worked on policy reforms across a wide range of topics, including: mental health, primary care, ageing population, workplace relations and wages policy. For many years I worked on employment and welfare policy reforms - for single parents, students, youth, and families. I am deeply familiar with how public policy is developed and implemented at the federal level of government.

I didn’t just do policy - for several years I ran national labour market programs, including Work for the Dole and the (then) Seasonal Worker Program, and I worked on rolling out programs for the Northern Territory Emergency Response. In my early career I focussed on research and evaluation, including designing, running and analysing large scale national workplace surveys and managing national surveys on youth. I also directed the national Work and Family Unit.

While most of my working life has been based in Canberra, I have worked for the Australian Council of Social Service in Sydney, for the International Labour Office in Geneva, and I was the Deputy Director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies in Melbourne.

I have a first-class Honors degree in Sociology and a Master of Arts from the University of Tasmania and a PhD on work and family issues from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Sydney. I have a range of early career publications including being the lead author of the book 'Changes at Work: the 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey' (Longman, 1997).