Rate My Professor Eden Thain

Dr Eden Thain serves as a Lecturer in the School of Psychology within the College of Education, Behavioural and Social Sciences at Adelaide University. Her passion for psychology originated in high school, sparked by the enduring question, "Why do people do what they do?" Initially captivated by the brain and physics, she aspired to utilize fMRI machines but discovered that human actions are profoundly shaped by social interactions. Consequently, her work delves into the intricate dynamics of social relationships, particularly discourse and communication. Thain's research interests span a wide array, including the contextualisation of social decision making and various governance models such as hierarchy, bureaucracy, adhocracy, holacracy, and sociocracy; the economic dimensions of social relationships; complex trauma; and discourses surrounding LGBTQIA+ identities and community separations. In teaching, she specializes in community psychology, qualitative methods ranging from interviews to ethnography and action research, critical psychology and its historical development, and discursive psychology. Her approach to research and education emphasizes criticality, curiosity, openness, valuing effort over outcomes, community voices over authority, and passion over metrics. Additional research areas encompass poverty, inclusivity and wellbeing, transgender studies, child protection, culture, gender, sexuality, discourse and pragmatics, and sociology of family and relationships.

Thain's scholarly output includes significant publications addressing contemporary social challenges. She is the author of Reimagining Poverty through Social Contextual Analyses: Finding New Ways to Understand 'Getting By' (Routledge, 2024), which reexamines poverty through social contextual lenses. She co-authored Conducting Contextual Research: How to Find Out About Yourself and Other People (Routledge, 2024) with Bernard Guerin, Kristen Stevens, Adan C. Richards, and Guilherme Bergo Leugi. Prominent journal articles include "Complex trauma from child abuse and neglect: 'I’m not sure we’re even all talking about the same thing and we’re probably not'" (Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma, 2024, co-authored with Sarah Cox, Amanda Paton, Sarah Shihata, and Leah Bromfield); "'You think that, again, that's the medication': reflecting on qualitative methods for interviewing family members of violent and impulsive men in an intervention trial" (Qualitative Research in Psychology, 2023); "From transition to detransition: Exploring societal attitudes towards gender detransitioning" (Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2025, with Emily Goodes and Stephanie Webb); "Women's experiences of changes in related men's impulsivity and domestic violence following men's participation in the ReINVEST clinical trial" (BMC Public Health, 2025, with Aklilu K. Hagos et al.); and "'It's not a normal upbringing': Insights from young mothers with care experience to improve parenting support and prevent intergenerational out-of-home care" (Children and Youth Services Review, 2025, with Rebecca Usher et al.). Holding a Doctor of Philosophy, Thain is eligible to co-supervise Masters and PhD students and is available for media comment.