Rate My Professor Stephanie Hardacre

Dr. Stephanie Hardacre is a Research Officer at the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education within the University of Newcastle's Engagement and Equity Division, affiliated with the Faculty of Education and Arts. She earned her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Newcastle in 2020, with a doctoral thesis titled 'Mobilising Men and Women in Support of Workplace Gender Equality: Does Leader Gender Matter?', which explored political solidarity and leadership dynamics in advancing gender equality. She also holds a Bachelor of Psychology from the same university. Hardacre previously served as a Research Assistant in the School of Psychology, Faculty of Science, from 2016, and in the School of Humanities and Social Science, Faculty of Education and Arts, from 2020. She has coordinated courses such as Foundations of Applied Psychology 2 and Applied Social Research. Currently, she is also a Research Fellow in the School of Medicine and Psychology at the Australian National University, working on an ARC-funded project examining online strategies to improve social integration and mental wellbeing for working-class university students. As a provisional psychologist pursuing a Master of Clinical Psychology, she combines research with clinical expertise to tackle social and psychological issues.

Her research specializations include social psychology, equity in higher education, gender-based violence, mental health, social class, and quantitative methods. Notable projects encompass studies on the impacts of gender-based violence on higher education participation, inter-agency efforts for post-crisis pathways for domestic violence victim-survivors (2022 grant, $5,000), and reports like 'Healing and Recovery from the Impacts of Gender-Based Violence' (2026) and 'Housing matters: Understanding the housing experiences of undergraduate regional, rural and remote students' (2021). Key publications feature 'Whose Issue is it Anyway? The Effects of Leader Gender and Equality Message Framing on Men's and Women's Mobilisation towards Workplace Gender Equality' (Frontiers in Psychology, 2018), 'We for She: Mobilising men and women to act in solidarity for gender equality' (Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 2018), 'Content appraisal and age moderate the relationship between passive social media use and mental ill-being' (Frontiers in Psychology, 2023), ''It's a lot of shame': understanding the impact of gender-based violence on higher education access and participation' (Teaching in Higher Education, 2025), and 'Should “sisters” be doing it by themselves? Leadership, allyship, and mobilization for gender equality' (Political Psychology, 2025). Her work contributes to understanding mobilization for social change and equity challenges in educational settings.