Alhassan Abdullah is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work (Teaching and Research) in the School of Social Work and Arts. Prior to joining Charles Sturt University, he worked as a Lecturer in Social Work at Flinders University, where he also served as the Course Coordinator for the Bachelor of Social Work Honours Program. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work with First Class Honours from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, in 2017, and a PhD in Social Work from the University of Hong Kong in 2022. He also had a stint as a Visiting Research Scholar at Haverford College in the United States. 

Alhassan has practice experience in child welfare and family wellbeing. His research focuses on child neglect and abuse (child maltreatment), violence against children, child protection, kinship foster care, family violence, and community-centered and culturally relevant approaches to violence prevention. He is particularly interested in understanding cultural characteristics and violence/abuse against children and women, especially in rural contexts.

Alhassan has carried out survey research projects and conducted research using data from Nepal, Hong Kong, Korea, Tunisia, Australia and China. He has led research projects on child maltreatment, funded by UNICEF Ghana, and research on child labor funded by the International Labour Organization (ILO). He has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles in leading social work journals, and 5 book chapters. He also serves on the editorial boards of social work journals, including Child Abuse & Neglect (IF = 3.4, ranked 1 in social work by Google Scholar), Practice: Social Work in Action, and Child Protection and Practice.

Broadly, Alhassan’s research focuses on issues affecting the wellbeing of children and families. Specifically, he is interested in developing knowledge on community-centered (whole community) and culturally normative approaches to protect children and vulnerable women from violence and abuse. His ambition is to contribute to building stronger communities, particularly in rural areas, where people are motivated by social and cultural norms to protect children from maltreatment and to act against domestic and family violence. He uses a cultural lens to investigate community and neighborhood-based protective measures against child maltreatment, and brings theoretical rigor to the study of child maltreatment and violence prevention. His value commitments theory (part of his PhD thesis) highlights how cultural norms and values around parenting regulate the effectiveness of protective actions by community members and serves as a primary preventive measure against child maltreatment in rural communities. Also, his co-authored general social theory of polyvictimization (3-dimensional polyvictimization theory) offers insight into the unique trauma experienced when multiple forms of maltreatment co-occur.

Alhassan is a mixed methods researcher with international experience in implementing nationally representative survey projects. He has conducted research and published findings using data from Ghana, Nepal, Hong Kong, Korea, and China.

Research areas

• Child neglect and abuse (child maltreatment),
• Child protection,
• Violence against children
• Kinship care, foster care, and residential care for children
• Informal social control and bystander intervention  
• Polyvictimization
• Family and domestic violence,
• Community partnerships in child protection,
• Culture and culturally safe practice in child welfare and family wellbeing,
• Rural child protection and family wellbeing,
• CALD families and child protection.

PhD Supervision 

I am open to accepting new PhD students. Please contact me to discuss potential PhD supervision if you are interested in the research areas mentioned above or related fields.

• Editorial Board, Child Abuse & Neglect, 2023 – current
• Editorial Board, Practice Social Work in Action, 2022 – current
• Editorial Board, Child Protection and Practice, 2023 - current
• Member, International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN), 2019 – current
• Member, Ghana Association of Social Workers, 2018 – current