Dr Heidi Hetz

I am a lecturer in the enabling pathway programs at UniSA College where I have been teaching sociology, academic writing, and literacy since 2015. At the College, I have built my career from sessional tutor to my current position of lecturer. I have also lectured in Sociology at undergraduate level, and I have taught through Open University.  

My career is driven by my commitment to social justice, equity, and inclusion. The work at the College is deeply meaningful to me as it allows me to support the students to realise their dream of tertiary education. My teaching is informed by enabling pedagogies, including ethos of care, inclusive approaches, scaffolding, setting challenging tasks, connecting to student life worlds, and drawing on student funds of knowledge, while maintaining academic rigour to support students in becoming independent learners and to ensure preparedness for transition to their undergraduate degrees.

In my role as a teaching academic at UniSA College, my current action research is focused on improving the external offering of literacy course Critical Thinking: Media and Academia, by improving teacher presence and student-to-student interaction, and by making innovative use of digital tools such as interactive H5P activities. My 2021 action research was entitled ‘Decoding the hidden curriculum in final essay preparation in a sociology course’. I have presented my research in the scholarship of learning and teaching at the annual Teaching Innovation Unit Symposium at UniSA, and at the 2021 Education Futures: Showcase of Scholarship of Teaching.

Since 2020, I have worked on two major UniSA College projects in response to UniSA’s digital learning strategy. In 2020, I collaborated on development of a suite of eight Academic Literacy Modules which are now available to students across the university. Since 2021, I have been working on the Quality Online Teaching Project, where I have collaborated with course coordinators across Education Futures to “uplift” their courses, with a focus on improving the navigation of the LearnOnline page, assessment instructions and resources, and the external delivery.

My commitment to social justice, equity, and inclusion also informs my sociological research with refugee-background communities. As a sociologist, I am interested in refugee narratives and (self-)representation. I have completed a PhD in Sociology at UniSA, conferred in June 2020, with a thesis exploring refugee narratives in the context of Australia’s asylum seeker debates. I am currently working on a book manuscript based on my PhD research.

My research has been published in Social Identities, Journal of Refugee Studies, and in an edited book entitled Anti-Racist Social Work: An International Perspective. I have co-authored two recent reports, both launched in 2021: Refugees Rejuvenating and Connecting Communities: An analysis of the social, cultural and economic contributions of Hazara humanitarian migrants in the Port Adelaide-Enfield area of Adelaide, South Australia, and: Intergenerational refugee aspirations and academic success: from uncertain pasts to promising futures. A current research project explores refugee settlement in regional and rural Australia.

I have presented my research nationally and internationally, including at the Regional Refugee Resettlement online forum, at numerous annual conferences of the Australian Sociological Association (TASA), at the Comparative Network on Refugee Externalisation Policies (CONREP) Melbourne masterclass, at the bi-annual conference of the International Australian Studies Association (InASA), at the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNet) at the University of Glasgow, and at the Joint EU Centres conference in Auckland, New Zealand.

Since 2021, I am the TASA Equity and Inclusion Portfolio leader. I am a member of the Settlement Action Network (SAN) and the Migration, Asylum Seeker and Refugee Research Network (MARRNet).

Prior to 2015, I worked and volunteered with newly arrived refugees at the Australian Refugee Association (ARA Inc.) and ARA Jobs for several years.

My personal pronouns are she / her.

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy University of South Australia

• Graduate Diploma in Integrated Human Studies University of Western Australia

• Bachelor of Arts Flinders University