Suzette Jackson

Suzette Jackson (she/her) is Māori (Te Ātiawa) and Pākehā. She is the Addictions and Lived Experience Course Programme Lead and Lecturer at Auckland University of Technology and a community researcher whose work focuses on equity, social justice and transformation within marginalised communities, particularly for wāhine (women) Māori and their tamariki (children).

Alongside her academic role, Suzette works as a research consultant and contractor on projects that centre lived experience. For the past three years she has been a researcher on a trans-Tasman study led by the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies at the University of Sydney, exploring tamariki and young people's experiences of parental immigration detention and deportation. She has also worked for more than six years as a part-time researcher at Higher Ground Papa Taumata Therapeutic Community.

Suzette is completing her doctorate at the University of Auckland, examining mothers' experiences of navigating a six-month residential drug treatment and parenting programme in Aotearoa New Zealand. A registered social worker and drug and alcohol practitioner, she has extensive experience in trauma, family violence and addiction counselling, and works at the intersection of these fields. She serves on the board of Inner City Women's Group, which provides specialist support and programmes for wāhine affected by family violence. Her research explores service responses to family violence, as well as people's experiences of homelessness and navigating social and state service systems.

Before moving into social work, research and academia, Suzette spent 11 years at Greenpeace in communications and management roles. She continues to draw on her activism in her research, teaching and community work, where she advocates for equity and systems change. Her research interests have been shaped by her own experiences of drug use, mothering and recovery. She has an adult daughter and is "lil nan" to her 12-year-old grandson, who was born during the early stages of her recovery.