Jessica Gerrard

Professor Jessica Gerrard is an Associate Professor in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. She earned her PhD and Masters (Coursework and Research) from the University of Cambridge, and her Bachelors Degree from the University of Technology Sydney. Previously, she held a McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Melbourne. Gerrard serves as Acting Director of the Australian Centre in the Faculty of Arts. In 2023, she was awarded the University of Melbourne's Award for Excellence in Mid-Career Research Achievements. Her research explores the intersections of social, educational, and policy change, with a particular emphasis on the politics of knowledge, expertise, and inequalities. Key areas include homelessness and the construction of education and work, school autonomy and parent engagement in disadvantaged communities, racial capitalism in education, populism and teacher expertise, grassroots Christian conservatism in schooling, and the role of parents in contemporary school governance.

Gerrard has made significant contributions through her publications, which have accumulated over 1,400 citations. Notable books include Learning Whiteness: Education and the Settler Colonial State (2022, co-authored with Arathi Sriprakash and Sophie Rudolph), Class in Australia (2022, co-authored with Steven Threadgold), Expertise (2022, co-authored with Jessica Holloway), and Precarious Enterprise on the Margins: Work, Poverty, and the New Commercial Revival of the Margins (2017). Prominent journal articles feature 'Education and Racial Capitalism' (2021), 'The Governing Parent-Citizen: Dividing and Valorising Parent Labour through School Governance' (2021), 'Schools as Public Things: Parents and the Affective Relations of Schooling' (2023, co-authored), 'The Engaged Parent: Schooling and Motherhood in the Contemporary Economy' (2025, co-authored), 'Philanthropy, Marketing Disadvantage and the Enterprising Public School' (2022), and 'Academic Knowledge and Contemporary Poverty: The Politics of Homelessness Research' with high citation counts. She teaches subjects such as Foundations: Policy and Social Change and Education for Social Change, influencing discussions on equity, social justice, and educational transformations in neoliberal contexts.

Professional Email: jessica.gerrard@unimelb.edu.au