Rate My Professor Emily Keddell

Professor Emily Keddell is Professor in Social Work in the Social and Community Work programme at the University of Otago, within the School of Social Sciences in the Humanities Division. She earned her BA, MCApSc, PGDipSocSc, and PhD from the University of Otago. Her academic career at the University of Otago began in 2005, building on prior practice experience in child protection social work, residential work with children, and family support social work. As a registered social worker, she coordinates and teaches courses such as SOWK 201 Fields of Practice, SOWK 302 Social Work for Children and Families – Analysis and Theory, SOWK 402/SOWK 562 Micro Intervention: Theories and Skills, SOWK 490 Dissertation, SOWK 552 Child and Family Social Work, and SOWK 509 Decision-making in Child Welfare. She supervises postgraduate students on topics including legislative changes to child welfare acts, stabilising factors in permanent placements, self-efficacy in parents of adolescents, views of family support services, experiences of teenage parents, impacts of notifications on client-worker relationships, job satisfaction among NGO managers, women's views of postnatal depression scales, mothers' roles in shared care arrangements, and pre-practicum service learning in counsellor education.

Keddell's research specializations encompass child welfare inequalities, child protection decision-making, the politics of child protection, and algorithmic decision tools in child protection, employing a critical lens on intersections between structural conditions, policy contexts, systems, power dynamics, and micro-level practice. Key publications include 'Shifting power at the front door: State-community decision-making partnerships in child protection' (2026), 'Abolition, decolonisation and public health approaches to child protection: convergence, divergence and the new neoliberalism' (2025), 'If you thought it was going to make a difference, you'd do it straight away: School staff decisions to report to Child Protection' (2025), 'The ethics of predictive risk modelling in the Aotearoa/New Zealand child welfare context: Child abuse prevention or neo-liberal tool?' (2015, cited 180 times), 'Algorithmic justice in child protection: Statistical fairness, social justice and the implications for practice' (2019, cited 153 times), 'Current debates on variability in child welfare decision-making: A selected literature review' (2014, cited 142 times), and 'Reasoning processes in child protection decision making: Negotiating moral minefields and risky relationships' (2011, cited 131 times). She presented her Inaugural Professorial Lecture, 'Alternative futures in child protection: with and beyond the state,' in October 2025, addressing social inequities, disparities, decision-making, algorithmic ethics, and collaborative approaches with iwi/Māori organisations. Keddell contributes to the field through associate membership in the Child Poverty Action Group, founding membership in the Re-Imagining Social Work blog collective, editorial collective membership for the Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work Journal, associate editorship of Qualitative Social Work, and editorial board service for Practice, the sister journal of the British Journal of Social Work.