Rate My Professor Phillipa Howard

Phillipa Howard serves as a Lecturer in Social Work Field Education in the Curtin School of Allied Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University, Perth, Australia. She coordinates the field education program for the Master of Social Work Qualifying course and has been involved in teaching and research since 2008. Prior to her academic career, Howard worked across health and community service sectors in Australia and South Africa. Her professional interests include international social work, fieldwork education, gender studies, and the promotion of anti-racism in social work. Located in Building 401 on the Curtin Perth campus, she contributes to the Office of the Provost portfolio.

Howard's research examines kinship care, with a particular emphasis on the experiences of custodial grandparents raising grandchildren due to parental incapacity from issues such as substance use, incarceration, neglect, or death. In the 2025 article 'Invisible Care: An Urgent Call for Gendered Recognition of Grandmother Care,' published in Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work, Howard, alongside Christina Fernandes, Rebecca J. Moran, and Barbara Blundell, critiques the gender-neutral language in grandparent caregiving literature that obscures the disproportionate burden on grandmothers. Employing a feminist post-structuralist framework and epistemic justice perspective, the paper calls for gendered recognition, remuneration, and policy reforms to address intersectional disadvantages including age, race, and poverty. Additional contributions include co-authorship on studies exploring psychological health and kinship care experiences of Australian grandparents raising grandchildren, custodial grandparents' access to services and supports, and the challenges faced by grandparents caring for children with autism spectrum disorder, as well as examinations of intersectional disadvantage and the cognitive dimensions of household labor. Her work underscores the invisibility of women's care labor and advocates for systemic change.