Dr Susan Baidawi is an Associate Professor,  Director of the Higher Degrees by Research (HDR) Program, and Co-Director of the Monash Criminal Justice Research Consortium (CJRC) in the Department of Social Work.  Her research expertise lies at the nexus of the child welfare and criminal justice fields. Dr Baidawi has conducted and authored outputs for numerous studies, reviews and evaluations in the fields of youth and adult criminal justice and child protection, including research that focuses on children at the intersection of child protection and youth justice systems, responses to younger children charged with offending from 10-13 years, and place-based approaches for addressing youth violence.

Dr Baidawi’s research is characterised by its high level academic, policy and practice impact, which is acknowledged by several awards including a 2024 Victorian Young Tall Poppy Award (AIPS), the 2022 Monash University Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence by an Early Career Researcher. She has also been awarded a prestigious Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) Fellowship from the Australian Research Council, and currently sits on the ACT Government Strengthening Child Protection Practice Committee, and the Editorial Board of Children and Youth Services Review.

Dr Baidawi has been awarded the following research grants as Chief Investigator:

• 2024:  Applying a Trauma-Informed Lens to Understand Pathways into Adolescent Family Violence Use: Expanding the Evidence Base to Inform Prevention and Effective Intervention. Funded by the Australian National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS).
• 2023: The Ageing in Prison Longitudinal Study (A-PLUS): health and frailty trajectories of older people in prison. Funded by the NHMRC (Cohort Grant Study).
• 2023: Building a best practice model to advance healthy ageing for care leavers (ex-residents of institutional out-of-home care) entering the aged care system. Funded by the National Centre for Healthy Ageing.
• 2021: Reviews of how to best deliver and evaluate place-based approaches for tackling local youth violence. Funded by the Youth Endowment Fund (UK).
• 2021: Care criminalisation of young people with disability in child protection systems. Funded by the Commonwealth Government Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. ***
• 2020: Children’s Court responses to early offending children: provisions and outcomes for 10- to 13-year-olds charged with offending. Funded by the Australian Institute of Criminology (Criminology Research Grant). ***
• 2019:  Dual child protection and youth justice clients: expanding the evidence base. Funded by an Australian Research Council (Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) Fellowship). ***

*** Primary Chief Investigator