Associate Professor Howard-Wagner is a non-Indigenous sociologist and socio-legal scholar and Research Director and Senior Fellow in the Centre for Indigenous Policy Research. She is former President of the Law and Society Association Australia and New Zealand and former co-Chief Editor of the Australian Journal of Social Issues (AJSI).

Howard-Wagner has a well-established international research standing and is well-recognised as contributing to the public policy literature attending to the structural and foundational challenges the state presents for Australian Indigenous policymaking. She has produced a body of work analysing Australian Government policy around overcoming Indigenous disadvantage/Closing the Gap and Indigenous service delivery in urban contexts, speaking back to those policy approaches through grounded knowledge and case studies of the invaluable contribution of urban First Nations-led governance, development, economies, communities, and community-controlled organisations to First Nations people and wider society.  It is a specialised body of research advancing knowledge through partnering with and privileging the voices of First Nations peoples. She has achieved this as the recipient of nine competitive categories 1, 2 & 3 grants, including four as lead CI. DP180103453 (lead CI), DE120100798 (lead CI), ANU Futures Scheme Award (lead CI), OCHRE LDM Evaluation (secondary CI) & OCHRE Accord Negotiation Review (secondary CI) interact in significant ways to consolidate this knowledge in urban localities. Research that is co-designed with First Nations people, communities and organisations and that is beneficial to First Nations peoples, organisations and communities and that reaches end-users (service providers and policy actors). 

She publishes and maintains broad interests in the fields of Sociology and Socio-Legal Studies. Her sole-authored manuscript Indigenous invisibility in the City (2021) is published in the Routledge Advances in Sociology series. Her article Governance of Indigenous policy in the neoliberal age: Indigenous disadvantage and the intersecting of paternalism and neoliberalism as a racial project (2018) is published in a lead international sociology journal Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Research published in Q1 and Q2 international and national journals, such as the lead international sociological journal in her field Ethnic and Racial Studies Journal (2018, Q1, 2466 reads & 27 citations) and first article, the first issue for the year in lead international Indigenous policy journal, International Journal of Indigenous Policy (2019, Q1, 193 downloads and 8 citations). Her analysis of and observations concerning Australian Indigenous policy development have been taken up and cited in 607 national/international publications and by scholars in Canada, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, and the Netherlands (see Google Scholar).

PhD

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy

overcoming urban Indigenous disadvantage

poverty governance

innovative Indigenous justice

urban Indigenous development, governance and self-determination

international urban Indigenous social movements

urban place-based Indigenous success

urban First Nations organisation-based success

urban and regional locality-based Indigenous service delivery, including service delivery enablement

Indigenous invisibility in the city

comparative international studies

whiteness, racism and race relations

state governmentality in the neoliberal age