Dr Martine Hawkes

Dr Martine Hawkes is a Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Child Protection and a qualitative researcher whose work centres on archives and records of trauma and abuse. She studies how recordkeeping practices shape institutional response, accountability, and public memory. Her current Monash-led project examines how child protection systems create, manage, and use records, with the aim of strengthening child-centred recordkeeping and decision making.

She has more than twenty years of experience across community, cultural, humanitarian, and academic settings. Her research covers child abuse and neglect, gender-based violence, refugee protection, justice reinvestment, and post-conflict response. Her international work includes projects in Mongolia, Kenya, Central Africa, Czechia, the Balkans, and Geneva, alongside long-standing work with culturally diverse communities in South Australia.

Her monograph Archiving Loss (Routledge 2019) examines the role of records of difficult events and volatile histories and continues to inform her approach to archival research and description. She is currently developing methods for describing and interpreting colonial collections.

Her recent work includes Senior Research Specialist for evaluation of a justice reinvestment initiative supporting Aboriginal families in Port Adelaide. She is known for trauma-informed, community-centred research design, the development of clear research tools and ethics protocols, and the ability to communicate complex material in accessible and accountable ways.

Australian Society of Archivists 

Australian Museums and Galleries Association

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy University of South Australia

• Master in Information Management (In Progress) University of South Australia

• Bachelor of Arts (Honours) University of South Australia

• Bachelor of Arts (Communication Studies) University of South Australia