Michelle Peterie

Dr Michelle Peterie is a Senior Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies and the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Sydney. She is a co-Editor-in-Chief of The Australian Journal of Social Issues, an executive member of the Australian Social Policy Association Management Committee, and a co-convenor of The Australian Sociological Association's Families and Relationships Thematic Group. Michelle has previously held positions at The University of Queensland and The University of Wollongong.

Michelle’s research investigates the impacts of social policies and practices on individual and collective wellbeing. Taking a person-centred approach - and in close collaboration with research participants and third-sector stakeholders - her work seeks to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children, families and communities. Michelle is particularly interested in lived experiences of (under)employment, poverty and social security receipt, and in the reverberating impacts of immigration enforcement. Michelle is currently leading an ARC DECRA project about children's experience of parental immigration detention and deportation (DE230101047), and an ARC Linkage Project about the long-term impacts of childhood immigration detention (LP230100393).

Michelle’s research has been published in a range of Australian and international journals and books. She has been the recipient of both the biennial award for the best article in the Journal of Sociology and the Mayer Journal Prize for the best article in the Australian Journal of Political Science. Her books include 'Infrastructures of Informal Care' (Peterie et al., 2026), 'Immigration Detention and Social Harm' (Peterie, 2024), 'Visiting Immigration Detention' (Peterie, 2022), 'Compulsory Income Management in Australia and New Zealand' (Marston et al., 2022), and 'Emotions in Late Modernity' (Patulny et al., 2019). Michelle has been invited to give expert evidence to the Australian Senate, the AAT and the Crown Solicitor, and her research has received international media attention.