Staff profile
Dr Anne-Maree Sawyer
Lecturer
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
School of Social SciencesMB 475, Melbourne (Bundoora)
- T: +61 3 9479 3186
- F: +61 3 9479 2705
- E: a.sawyer@latrobe.edu.au
Qualifications
BA (Hons – Sociology), BSW, Grad Dip Hum (English), BA (Hons – English), PhD (La Trobe)
Membership of professional associations
Aust. Assoc. of Social Workers (AASW). The Aust. Sociological Assoc. (TASA). British Sociological Assoc. Study Group on Auto/Biography. International Network of Qualitative Research in Mental Health.
Area of study
Sociology
Brief profile
Anne-Maree is a Lecturer in Sociology, joining the La Trobe School of Social Sciences teaching staff in 2010. Between 2007 and 2009 she was a Research Fellow in the Politics Program, working on an ARC-funded project entitled ‘Managing risk in community services: a preliminary study of the impacts of risk management on Victorian services and clients’. Anne-Maree is also a qualified social worker with extensive work experience on the frontline of mental health services in Victoria.
Research interests
Social Policy
- Mental health policy and practice
- Social welfare and the human service professions
Urban and Regional Studies
- Narrative methodologies in the social sciences
- Sociology of work and the professions
Teaching units
SOC1SAC - Introduction to Sociology: Self and Community. SOC1AAB - Introduction to Sociology: Australia and Beyond. SOC2/3SHI - Sociology of Health and Illness.
Recent publications
Savy, P and Sawyer, A 2009, ‘Mental illness: understandings, experience and service provision’, in J Germov (ed.), Second Opinion: An Introduction to Health Sociology, 4th edition, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, pp 269-287.
Sawyer, A 2009, ‘Mental health’, in H Cleak (ed.), Assessment and Report Writing in the Human Services, Cengage, Melbourne, pp 73-85. Sawyer, A 2009, ‘Mental health workers negotiating risk on the frontline’, Australian Social Work 62(4): 441-459.
Sawyer, A, Green, D, Moran, A and Brett, J 2009, ‘Should the nurse change the light globe? Human service professionals managing risk on the frontline’, Journal of Sociology, 45(4): 361-382.
Sawyer, A and Green, D 2009, ‘Risk management and individualised care in the community’, presented at The Annual National Conference of the Australian Sociological Association, Canberra, December 3.
Sawyer, A 2008, 'Negotiating Risk on the Frontline: Community mental health workers' experiences of risk management policies', presented at The Annual National Conference of the Australian Sociological Association, Melbourne, December 4.
Sawyer, A 2008, ‘Risk and new exclusions in community mental health practice’, Australian Social Work, 61(4): 327-341.
Savy, P and Sawyer, A 2008, ‘Risk, suffering and competing narratives in the psychiatric assessment of an Iraqi refugee’, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 32 (1): 84-101.
Green, D and Sawyer, A 2008, 'Risk, regulation, integration: Implications for governance in community service organisations’, Just Policy, 49: 13-22.
Sawyer, A 2005, ‘From therapy to administration: deinstitutionalisation and the ascendancy of psychiatric “risk thinking”’, Health Sociology Review, 14(3): 283-296.
Research projects
I am currently involved in an ARC-funded project, entitled ‘Managing risk in community services: a preliminary study of the impacts of risk management on Victorian services and clients’. This is a qualitative research project that explores the way in which ‘risk management’ has been taken up and translated into practice by Victorian community-based services across three fields – disability, aged care and mental health. It involves in-depth interviews with senior-level managers (including chief executive officers), program managers and team leaders, frontline workers, service users and family carers.
