About Professor Kerry Carrington

Biography of Professor Kerry Carrington

Background

As a young child, I grew up in the Hawkesbury region of NSW, then moved to the Sunshine Coast, attended Buderim Primary School and then Maroochydore High School. At 18, I was the youngest of six siblings and first to attend university in 1980, a milestone made possible through the Whitlam Labor Government that opened up higher education to the poor and not just the rich.

During my adolescence, I aspired for greater opportunities for ordinary students to attend university. Today, I am honoured to serve as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Law and Society at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

At 60, I left a rewarding full-time academic career to become an independent research consultant, returning to the coast to prioritise family and my passion for the ocean, as a Surf Life Saver at Fairy Meadow NSW.

Skills

With more than 30 years of experience in government and the tertiary sector (summarised in Wikipedia), I possess extensive expertise in research, grant writing and leadership.

 In 2022, I provided expertise to the Coroner in the investigation into the death of Doreen Langham, and in 2025, an expert report for the advocates seeking a new inquest into the death of Louisa Ioannidis. 

As a trained mentor coach for ETHOS, I have successfully mentored many academics with their careers, promotions, networking and publications.

I draw on my extensive experience with ARC grants to assist academics in writing research grant applications, primarily for the Australian Research Council. 

Research Record

 

Throughout my career, I have published over 150 articles and led eight Australian Research Grants totaling $1.5 million. Some of these research teams have produced groundbreaking knowledge. Along with my husband, Russell Hogg, and my colleague, Maximo Sozzo from Universidad Nacional de Litoral in Argentina, I have been a key architect of southern criminology, which has garnered nearly 1,000 citations. This project aims to bridge global divides, democratize criminological concepts, theories, and methods, and introduce innovative ideas and research from the periphery. It builds on a rich tradition of scholarship from Latin America, inspired by the Southern School of Art in the early 1900s and the numerous publications of Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni.

You can read a short overview of my research into how women’s police stations effectively respond to domestic family violence by clicking here.

Research awards 
  • 2026, our ARC team won the Research Award for our study “Enhancing the policing of gender violence in the Pacific”, awarded by Australasian Council of Women in Policing ACWAP | LinkedIn
  • 2016, elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia, for outstanding and distinguished contributions to the social sciences.
  • 2015, named as one of Qld’s top 50 thinkers for ground-breaking research on the criminological impact of mining.
  • 2014, awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award (American Society of Criminology ASC, Division of Critical Criminology) for lasting and foundational contributions to the discipline over three decades.
  • 2013, received a Distinguished Scholar Award from the (ASC Division of Women and Crime) for outstanding contributions to the field of women and crime.
  • 2012, won the Allen Austin Bartholomew Award for the best journal article published in the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology, titled “The Resource Boom’s Underbelly: The Criminological Impacts of Mining”.
  • 1990, The Jean Martin Award for the Best Phd in the Social Sciences, awarded by the Australian Sociological Association.
  • 1985, Australian Postgraduate Research Award, for my Phd. 

International Networks

Over 3 decades, I have cultivated a vast international network of scholars, publishers, policy makers and journals and successfully nurtured many early career researchers, especially from Latin America, into successful careers. I am competent in reading, writing and speaking conversational Spanish.

I have Presented 32 invited keynotes in the US, Spain, Argentina, China, Mexico, and Australia for influential bodies such as:

  • United Nations Commission of the Status of Women NGO sessions, New York, 2019;
  • United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, Vienna, 2021 (on-line)
  •  Brazilian–Australian Embassy Partnership  Preventing Domestic and Gender-based Violence,  co-hosted by the Specialised Domestic Violence Prosecution Office of Brasilia, the Women’s Observatory at the Brasilia Federal Senate, the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights, the UN Development Program 2019.
  • Keynote to the Latin American Studies of Australasia 2020
  • Keynote to the British Society of Criminology 2021
  • Invited Presentations about her research on Women’s Police Stations at Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford; the Cambridge University criminology;  The Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice all in 2021.

Journal Editing

I have been an editorial board member of 11 international journals, 4 of which are published in Spanish.

Journal Editing and Board Memberships

  • Founding and Co-Chief editor, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2012-22 (Q1)
  • Pacific Rim editor, Critical Criminology, since 2012 (Q1), journal of the American Society of Criminology (ASC)
  • International ed. board member, Feminist Criminology, since 2014 (Q2), journal of the ASC
  • International ed. board member, Criminology and Criminal Justice, since 2011 (Q1), British Society of Criminology
  • Ed. board member, Australia and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 2018-22 (Q1)
  • Ed. board member, Delito y Sociedad (Crime and Society), since 2018, journal of the University of Buenos Aries
  • Ed. board member, Asian Journal of Criminology, since 2020 (Q1), journal of the Asian Criminological Association
  • Ed. board member, Current Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, since 2020, journal of Institute of Criminology, University of Sydney
  • Revista de Historia de las Prisiones (History of the Prison) since 2020, Argentina
  • Editorial Board, Novum Jus. Revista Especializada en Sociología Política y Jurídica (Colombia)
  • Editorial Board Member, Ius Poenale (Faculty of Law-Universitas Lampung, Indonesia)

Board Roles

2023 to date Registrar, Fairy Meadow Surf Life Saving Club

2020 to 2022 Chair of the Stop Domestic Violence external advisory board, QUT Centre for Justice

2012 to 2019, Vice Chair of the Division of Critical Criminology, American Society of Criminology.

2015- date Senior Counsellor of the Asian Criminological Society.