Dr Toni McCallum is a Lecturer in Early Childhood in the College of Indigenous Futures, Education and Arts at Charles Darwin University. She teaches into the Master of Teaching (early childhood and primary) programme and has developed curriculum on the sociology of education.
Toni has a PhD in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of Newcastle. Her research interests centre on the gendered nature of domestic and family violence, specifically coercive control, queer theory and feminist new materialisms. Toni’s recent publications use post-humanist and ecological systems theory to position domestic violence as a set of practices. Her research employs creative fiction and drama to foster empathy, insight and understanding of the lived experience of domestic violence.
Toni’s research has recently moved into the effect of complex trauma on children exposed to domestic and family violence. She recently advised on a grant to the Northern Territory Government for funding to a Darwin school to take a community-based approach to preventing domestic, family and sexual violence. Working with mainly Indigenous children and their parents, along with the community and teachers, culturally responsive and appropriate resources and skills will be developed in the school.
Toni chooses interdisciplinary collaborations combining research perspectives from criminology, social work, sociology, anthropology, education and law. She is currently a co-facilitator of an interdisciplinary working group, researching the impacts of family and domestic violence, and particularly coercive control, using a race, class and gendered lens. This group works across three universities with the hub based at Griffith University. They recently presented at the national ‘Stop Domestic Violence’ conference on the Gold Coast in December 2021, performing a short play on ‘Writing Law Reform on Coercive Control: Multidisciplinary Perspectives’. They also wrote a submission to the ‘Queensland Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce’ in 2021 on options for legislating around coercive control.