Joe Moran

For over 20 years I have worked as a lecturer and tutor, originally in Ireland at the Waterford Institute of Technology (now South East Technological University - SETU) where I taught social policy to social care and early childhood care and education students. Since 2019, after a permanent move to Western Australia, I have taught at Murdoch University, originally on the University Pathways Program – OnTrack – before joining the Community Development team in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in early 2024.

Prior to my teaching career I worked as a social worker in a variety of roles, hospital social work, with adults and children with an intellectual disabilities, and in child protection in Ireland and in the U.K.

Subsequently, I worked for almost five years for Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs’ Refugee Agency where I held the post of Senior Resettlement Officer. The Refugee Agency assisted refugees invited by the Irish Government through the UNHCR for permanent resettlement or for periods of temporary protection (at that time we worked with people from Vietnam, Bosnia and Kosovo). When at the Refugee Agency I led the establishment of a not-for-profit housing organisation for refugees, and then went on to manage it.

In my time in the School of HASS, I have taught on the MA in Community Development. It is a great pleasure to work with a diverse group of students from Australia, Bhutan and other Asian countries, but also from African and South American countries too.

Supporting student research is also important to me and I currently work as a supervisor alongside committed colleagues with several postgraduate students. I believe in the power of stories in research and my preferred methodological approach is narrative inquiry.