Executive Director
Associate Professor John Spoehr has over twenty years' experience as a social and economic analyst, managing numerous large scale research projects and leading a range of high level reviews and evaluations. He has published widely in the areas of workforce development, gender and work-life balance, social inclusion and public policy. Associate Professor Spoehr has high level experience in the conduct of major reviews and evaluations, including Review of South Australian Employment Programs, the Review of the Parents Return to Work Program, and the Review of the Joint Group Training Program. He is a member of the South Australian Government's Work-life Balance Advisory Committee and the Australian Bureau of Statistics Gender Statistics Advisory Group.
Associate Professor Spoehr has wide experience in gender-focused research and policy analysis, specifically related to labour market participation and workforce development. He has led a range of WISeR projects in this area of specialisation, including a recent analysis for the UN Population Fund of gender budgeting in the health sector, the development of Gender Indicators Online for the SA Office for Women and the development of Towards a Women's Employment and Workforce Development Strategy for the SA Office for Women.
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Deputy Director
Dr Kate Barnett is Deputy Executive Director at the Australian Workplace Innovation and Social Research Centre, building on 25 years' experience as a social policy consultant in South Australia and nationally when she was Managing Director of Kate Barnett and Associates. She specialises in policy analysis and in writing policy-focused reports and has extensive experience in working with public sector organisations at national and State level. She has strong qualitative research and evaluation skills, and has undertaken numerous projects in the field of ageing and aged care, including culturally sensitive aged care. Dr Barnett has a strong background in social policy analysis, and in particular, in policy relating to the target groups of older people, young people, people with a disability, Indigenous people and people from diverse cultural backgrounds.
During her years as a social policy researcher Dr Barnett has had worked closely with the Australian aged care sector (policy and service providers) and has significant understanding of the service system. She has worked with a range of residential and community providers in metropolitan, regional and rural Australia, and with providers specialising in providing culturally specific care. In addition she has worked for the past 15 years with the vocational education and training sector and has extensive knowledge of that system and in particular, the development and evaluation of training programs. In the early 1990s, Dr Barnett was Senior Research Fellow, specialising in Equity, at the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER).
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Senior Research Fellow
Dr Ann-Louise Hordacre is a Senior Research Fellow with the Australian Workplace Innovation and Social Research Centre. She is project manager for the Evaluation of the Return to Work (RTW) Fund and associated projects and programs and for the WISeR's WorkCover SA funded research project examining the role of workplace factors in achieving effective return to work. With over 13 years working in health and aged care research, Dr Hordacre brings extensive experience, skills and knowledge in high level project management, as well as quantitative and qualitative research methods, analysis and reporting.
Prior to joining the WISeR, Dr Hordacre was the Research Manager at the Primary Health Care Research and Information Service (PHC RIS). As a member of the Executive she contributed to strategic planning for the future direction of the organisation, prepared proposals for new work, negotiated and delivered on contractual requirements for the Department of Health and Ageing Primary and Ambulatory Care Division.
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Research Fellow
Cecilia Moretti has an extensive background in research and evaluation activities focused on the community health and primary health care sectors, as well as working in the non-government sector and in the South Australian Department of Premier and Cabinet. Qualitative research methods are her key area of expertise, however she also brings considerable experience in quantitative methods and data management, analysis and reporting.
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Research Fellow
Dr Sara Howard is a Research Fellow with the Australian Workplace Innovation and Social Research Centre. Dr Howard has an extensive background in quantitative research methods and has managed a diverse range of projects (some of which have involved coordinating qualitative components). Her key area of expertise is ageing and she brings exceptional interpersonal and organisational skills. Prior to joining the WISeR, Sara was Research Manager for a large randomised controlled trial (RCT) about chronic disease self-management. In this role, Dr Howard managed a large budget ($900,000) and multidisciplinary team of both clinical and research staff. She was involved in the preparation, implementation and monitoring of the RCT which successfully recruited 254 older Australians with multiple chronic diseases. Her responsibilities were to oversee all aspects of the project and deliver scheduled outputs on time and within budget, as prescribed by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA), the funders of the project.
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Research Fellow
Rasika Ranasinghe's primary research areas are in labour market policy and development economics with a focus on poverty, education, employment and gender issues. She has worked on a range of projects in the USA, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Cambodia, Australia and India.
She specialises in labor market issues, workforce planning, employment/unemployment, wages, labour mobility, poverty and inequality, household welfare, access to education and health, gender and development economics, youth: school to work transitions, employment, at-risk groups, education: returns to education, intergenerational mobility, migrant workers
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Senior Research Associate Simon Molloy is an economist with 20 years of experience consulting in media, telecommunications, information technology and creative industry economics. He is principal of Systems Knowledge Concepts Pty Ltd, an economic analysis consultancy with a focus on network and infrastructure industries - information technology, telecommunications, creative industries, network industries and infrastructure. SKC specialises in applied microeconomics including qualitative modelling. Simon's work emphasises exposition of underlying economic theory, analytical transparency and accessible arguments. |
Research Officer
Sarah Crossman has a background in the spatial and environmental sciences with over ten years of technical, communication and leadership experience. Her experience covers a broad range of disciplines including water resource use, native vegetation management and spatial data governance and policy within the South Australian Government. Sarah's current research focus is on the use of spatial technology to support studies on the social aspects of climate change adaptation in South Australia.
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Personal and Administrative Assistant Josie is the personal assistant to Executive Director John Spoehr and provides administrative support to the Australian Workplace Innovation and Social Research Centre's team. Josie also manages the South Australian Policy Online (SAPO) newsletter and website. SAPO is an interactive public policy website linking researchers and public policy makers in South Australia, with key publications, projects, news and events disseminated to over 2,589 policy makers and researchers in a fortnightly newsletter. Josie also manages the WISeR website updating staff and project information. |
Casual Research Officer
Mark graduated from a Bachelor of Social Sciences (Anthropology), at the University of Adelaide in 2011. The final semester of Mark's degree saw him carry out an Arts Internship Scheme at the Australian Workplace Innovation and Social Research Centre. Mark's project was entitled "Making Sense of Social Movements: The shaping of climate change activism in a changing political economy".
Since completing this project, Mark has been engaged in research assistance to ongoing projects at the Australian Workplace Innovation and Social Research Centre including maintaining the South Australian Policy Online (SAPO) website and distributing a fortnightly SAPO update newsletter. Mark completed his Honours in Gender, Work & Social Inquiry in 2012.
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Dr Sara Howard
Dr Ray Broomhill 
Dexter Whitfield
Exploring the missing links : a critical inquiry into the role of social capital in Australian regional development.
Monitoring systems for sustainability: what are they measuring?
Beyond the Creative Quick Fix: Towards an understanding of creativity's place in South Australia's economic development agenda.
