Rate My Professor Susan Dennison

Susan Dennison is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and a key member of the Griffith Criminology Institute at Griffith University. She earned her Bachelor of Arts with Honours from Swinburne University of Technology in 1997 and holds a PhD. Throughout her extensive career at Griffith University, spanning over two decades, Dennison has emerged as an international leader in the field of parental incarceration research. Her work examines how childhood adversity, particularly maltreatment and parental incarceration, influences young people's development and long-term outcomes. She actively seeks to transform policies and systems to mitigate the intergenerational transmission of offending and disadvantage, with a strong commitment to enhancing correctional design, policy, and practice concerning prisoner-family relationships, contact, and community re-entry.

Dennison's contributions have been recognized with prestigious awards, including an inaugural Australian Research Council Future Fellowship in 2009 for her project titled 'What about the children? A study of the intergenerational consequences of paternal incarceration.' She also received the Research Leadership Award at Griffith University's Vice Chancellor's Research Excellence Awards. Her prolific publication record includes key works such as 'My Life Is Separated: An Examination of the Challenges and Barriers to Parenting for Indigenous Fathers in Prison' (British Journal of Criminology, 2014), 'Family imprisonment, maternal parenting stress and its impact on child behaviour problems' (2018), 'Family member incarceration and physical health problems' (2021), 'Mental Disorders Among Mothers in Contact with the Criminal Justice System' (2024), and 'Teenage Motherhood Among Those Whose Mothers Were Incarcerated' (2025). Dennison supervises doctoral students on topics like trauma impacts and prisoner re-entry, and she contributes to major initiatives such as the Transforming Corrections to Transform Lives project. Her research has garnered over 1,800 citations on ResearchGate, underscoring her significant influence in criminology.