Dr Marion Frere

Deputy Director, Research and Policy, McCaughey Centre, VicHealth Centre for the Promotion of Mental Health and Community Wellbeing

Telephone: +61 3 8344 9125
Facsimile: +61 3 9348 2832
Email: marionf@unimelb.edu.au

Throughout her career, Marion has moved between academia and the public sector, melding a passion for creative, multi-disciplinary thinking with a desire to find policy solutions that work. 

“It’s about having a vision for how we want to live and the kind of world we want to live in. What is it about community that we value?  What is the role of government and public policy in getting us there? That has been the driver for me.”

Marion has qualifications in politics, gender studies and criminology.  Her award winning PhD thesis drew evidence and inspiration from the fields of law, criminology, public policy, politics, philosophy, history and geography, and was designed to break down traditional disciplinary boundaries in both methodological approach and content.

Questions of subjectivity, identity and belonging form the core of Marion’s thinking about community.  The common thread to her work has been an acute awareness of society’s tendency to exclude people by grouping and labelling them and regarding them as “other”.  This focus has shaped her work on disengaged and same-sex attracted young people and on issues of drug-use, HIV/AIDS, mental and physical violence in prison.

In her first year at the McCaughey Centre Marion will play a key role in the implementation of Community Indicators Victoria (CIV).  She sees the Community Indicators project as a powerful resource that gives local communities a more informed role in deciding their own futures. “It builds the evidence base so that communities can understand how things are going,  it improves local ability to decide what really matters and where to focus their efforts.” 

After the launch of CIV in July 2007, Marion will focus on leadership of the Freedom from Violence work in the McCaughey Centre, with an initial focus on family violence.   In this work, Marion will focus both on the policy response to family violence, in particular the governance arrangements at the state and local level, and on the ways in which our relationship to activities and institutions, public and private space, is affected by the way in which we conceptualise, live and use violence. 
 
Marion’s current policy and research interests include:

• Violence and culture
• Family violence
• Feminist theory
• Public policy and governance, especially networks and partnerships
• Community wellbeing and community indicators

Qualifications

PhD (Criminology), University of Melbourne (2002)
MA (Gender Studies), University of Melbourne (1995)
BA Hons (Politics), University of Western Australia (1988)

Prizes and awards

Premier’s Achievement Award for excellence in public policy 2005
Chancellor’s Medal (Humanities) Most Outstanding PhD Thesis 2002

Work History

2006: A/Assistant Director, Social Policy Branch, Department of Premier and Cabinet
2003-2006: Principal Policy Adviser, Policy and Strategy Projects, Department of Premier and Cabinet
2000-2006: Research Fellow, Centre for Public Policy, University of Melbourne
1996-2000: PhD candidate, Lecturer and Tutor, University of Sydney and University of Melbourne
1994-1996: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
1992-1994: MA Candidate, Lecturer and Tutor, University of Melbourne
1989-1992: Senior Policy Adviser, Department of Employment, Education and Training
1989: Graduate Recruit, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet

Publications

Frere, M. Moving On: Women and Retirement from Local Government, Municipal Association of Victoria and Victorian Local Governance Association, August 2003.
Frere, M. “Lifelong learning and non-standard work: whose responsibility?” in L. Hancock et al (eds) Future Directions in Australian Social Policy: New Ways of Preventing Risk, Growth 49, November 2002.
Hancock, L., Howe, B., Frere, M. and O’Donnell, A. (eds) Future Directions in Australian Social Policy: New Ways of Preventing Risk, Growth 49, November 2002.
Frere, M. Strengthening Communities Through Women’s Participation:, Municipal Association of Victoria and Victorian Local Governance Association, August 2002.
Frere, M. and Jukes, J. Our town: Working with Same-Sex Attracted Young People in Rural Communities, VicHealth, February 2002.
Frere, M. and Jukes, J.. Advocacy, Community-Based Organisations and the Development of the Fourth National HIV/AIDS Strategy, Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, July 2001.
Frere, M. and Reader, L. Bedtime vs Bathtime: The Work and Family Report, Office of Women’s Policy, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Victoria, October 2000.