Director - Housing and Community Research Group
"B.Sc. (Hons.), London School of Economics, Ph.D (Sociology), London School of Economics, Bachelor of Social Work, University of Tasmania"
| Contact Campus | Sandy Bay Campus |
| Building | Social Sciences Building |
| Room Reference | 411 |
| Telephone | +61 3 6226 7487 |
| Fax | +61 3 6226 2864 |
| D.Habibis@utas.edu.au |
Daphne is a sociologist whose PhD was completed at the London School of Economics in the UK. Since coming to Tasmania she has worked in the School of Sociology and Social Work at the University of Tasmania, with her most recent position being sociology discipline head, Launceston campus. Daphne has published widely on housing and urban policy issues especially in relation to tenancy sustainment and Aboriginal housing. She is the co-author, with Associate Professor Maggie Walter, of the monograph, Social Inequality in Australia: Discourses, Realities and Futures published by Oxford University Press (2008), now being prepared for its second edition.
National Housing Research Program: New and Emerging Models of Tenancy Management in Remote Aboriginal Communities $80,000
Housing reforms in remote Indigenous communities have resulted in a variety of tenancy management arrangements with different mixes of state, community and private housing roles. This project is being completed with Rhonda Phillips from the University of Queensland and will provide information about the progress of state and territory governments in improving tenancy management in remote Indigenous communities.
National Housing Research Program: Aboriginal Lifeworlds, Conditionality and Housing Outcome – Indigenous Multi-year Research Project of $1,130,000
This project, undertaken with Professor Paul Memmott of the University of Queensland, takes the issue of increasing contractual obligations attached to Indigenous welfare, such as income management, and locates it within a conceptual paradigm that helps to shift policy thinking in the field. It uses the concepts of recognition, welfare contractualism, social capital and Indigenous governance structures to develop a model of the recognition space within which housing services and tenants negotiate their mutual demands and expectations. This model will be used in multi-site case study research that asks what is the optimum balance between these competing relationships such that it produces positive outcomes for Indigenous tenants while acknowledging the constraints imposed on social housing providers.
Everyday Kindness in Australia – 2011 Australian Social Survey of Social Attitudes
Building on earlier research interests in the sociology of religion, and the work of Dr Nicholas Hookway on contemporary moralities, I am developing a project, with Dr Hookway and Dr Vreugdenhil, examining how kindness as a moral emotion, is understood and experienced. The first stage of this project is analysing data from the 2011 Australian Social Survey of Social Attitudes to identify the motivations, meanings and social distribution of kindness in Australia. The findings will be used to provide insights into debates about individualisation and the decline of community in modernity.