Refugee Education Australia Research Seminar: Translating student trauma - Staff understandings and the institutional politics of care

Translating student trauma: Staff understandings and the institutional politics of care

Join us to hear from Maree Martinussen (Charles Sturt University) who will present findings from research on trauma in higher education (with Professor Sarah O'Shea)

Trauma is increasingly visible across higher education, in wellbeing programs, inclusion strategies and pedagogical frameworks. Despite this growing prominence, what counts as trauma, who it refers to, and what universities owe in response remain conceptually unsettled. This talk draws on a national qualitative survey of 83 Australian university staff, analysed through reflexive thematic analysis, to explore how a diverse staffing cohort defines and operationalises student trauma and what the tensions in their accounts reveal about institutional conditions of care and harm. Staff navigated competing demands: between psychological and relational understandings of trauma, between empathy and professional containment, and between commitment to institutional care and frustration at its limits. Many also turned the lens back on the university itself, identifying managerial pressures and compliance cultures as sources of harm rather than sites of support. These tensions suggest that trauma-informed practice is not simply a technical undertaking but a cultural and institutional one, shaped by how responsibility for care is distributed and whose distress is recognised. The talk asks whether universities can hold and learn from the discomfort trauma-informed care surfaces, rather than seeking to contain it.

About the researcher

Dr Maree Martinussen is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research bridges gender studies, identity studies and higher education equity. Her work focusses on understanding the complex experiences of historically underrepresented students throughout their academic journeys, with particular emphasis on those from working-class, low socioeconomic, and first-in-family backgrounds pursuing higher degrees.