Rate My Professor Robyn Newitt

Robyn Newitt is a proud Tharawal woman from the South-West Sydney area of New South Wales and a Yorta Yorta woman along the Murray River in Victoria. She serves as a Lecturer in Criminology within the Department of Social Work at the School of Primary and Allied Health Care, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University. As a historian and Aboriginal scholar, her work centers on the criminal justice system and social issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Newitt holds a Bachelor of Criminology (2013), a Bachelor of Criminology with Honours (2015), and a Master's degree in Criminology from Monash University, where her thesis examined recidivism and the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in Victoria's criminal justice system.

Her research interests encompass social constructs of Aboriginality, Indigenous knowledges in higher education settings, sovereignty and self-determination within the criminal justice system, imprisonment of Aboriginal women, family violence, pre- and post-release support for Aboriginal people, border control, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth, police brutality and over-surveillance, prison abolition, systemic and institutional racism, Indigenous (mis)representations in sport, and historiography. Newitt's experience in social and criminal justice systems informs her efforts to improve outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Key publications include "Bordered welfare in Australia: Income management as a bordering technology of neoliberal and colonial governance" (2025, with Weber and Maher), "Living with Experience in the Academy: Pressures to Disclose in Routine Research Activities" (2025, with Baidawi et al.), "Exemptions from Compulsory Income Management: A Short 'History of the Present'" (2023, with Weber and Maher), and contributions to "The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice" (2023). She received the Southern Womens Action Network Bursary in 2019. Previously, she served as an Independent Visitor with the Commission for Children and Young People (Victoria) from 2019 to 2021. Newitt contributes to Indigenous education on Monash's School of Primary and Allied Health Care education committee.