Jane Chen
PhD
Jane Chen (she/her) (www.janechen.me) is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, born and raised as a settler on unceded Wurundjeri lands. As a sociologist and social policy scholar-practitioner-activist, her work broadly focuses on understanding and dismantling structural drivers of complex social inequalities. Professionally, she is a public servant, with expertise in gender equality policy, multicultural affairs, and strategic planning. She is also a writer, public speaker and non-executive director, and has held various advocacy and advisory roles across the youth and multicultural sectors.
Contact:
- ORCID Profile
Thesis
Understanding Intersectional Approaches in Policymaking: A Victorian Government Case Study
Intersectionality's popular uptake across the academy, civil society and governments has triggered critiques that it has become flattened into a "buzzword": a vaguely used ideal now removed from its Black feminist roots. Amidst these concerns, this research takes up intersectionality as a provisional concept, and investigates (and encourages) new ways of engaging with intersectionality. Through an ethnography of a Victorian public service department, it explores the institutional life of intersectionality - how it is understood, felt, embedded into process and otherwise applied by public policymakers in Australia. It seeks to interrogate and strengthen intersectionality's translation from theory into practice.
Research interests
- Intersectionality studies
- Sociology
- Black feminism
- Policy studies
- Ethnography
Supervisors
- Elizabeth Dean
- Susan Olney
- Leah Ruppanner