Cris Townley
Biographic Data
| ID | 1259758 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cris Townley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cris |
| FAMILY NAME | Townley |
| SIGNATURE | TOWNLEY C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Western Sydney University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5996-2878 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Transformative change or status quo? An investigation of the Senate Inquiry recommendations on policy and practice regarding school refusal in Australia
One of the most significant challenges currently facing education in Australia, and globally, is the decline in school attendance rates, along with a growing awareness of the associated harm being done to many children in attending school environments. Much policy attention is now focused on declining attendance, including a recent Australian Government Senate Inquiry into school refusal. Using a transformational change through public policy fram…
Participation, community and affirmation
Sport and dance continue to be dominated by cis-normative gender binary practices including uniforms and administrative processes. As a result, opportunities for non-binary participation are restricted. Deploying normative resistance and inventive pragmatism, parents navigate balancing privacy and disclosure to navigate access to participation and find their place in a community
‘Uncharted territory’
Check‐Ups Before School
Children in families experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage are more likely to start school with unaddressed developmental needs than children who do not experience disadvantage. Participation in well‐child checks and developmental screening programs is low in Australian disadvantaged communities. This research explores an integrated approach to addressing this challenge by embedding place‐based child and family nurses in early childhood educati…
School can’t
Hypervisibility and erasure
What parents know
The childhood and adolescence of transgender and gender diverse children and young people (trans children) is contested in many areas, such as media, education, health, and increasingly in the political sphere. Parents and carers of trans children navigate services and societal relations in their journey to affirm their children, from happy childhood to trans adults. This paper reports on the accounts of parents of trans children in Australia. Se…
Stay home, stay safe? Public health assumptions about how we live with Covid
The COVID pandemic has had an uneven impact on families and communities, exacerbating existing structural disadvantage. We demonstrate that the construction of the pandemic by policymakers as primarily a medical problem has shaped the public health response in such a way as to hide the resulting lack of access to necessities for many and deterioration in people's wellbeing. We interviewed social welfare service providers in an urban area of high …
The relationship between social support and parent identity in community playgroups
Community playgroups are member-run parenting groups in Australia, aligned with early childhood services. Parents and carers meet weekly with their babies, toddlers and preschool children. Through interviews with mothers who attend community playgroups, I find that these playgroups are important sites of social support for parents. Social support is interwoven with parental and family identity, and the shift in identity when becoming a parent. Th…
Inclusion, belonging and intercultural spaces
This article employs narrative policy analysis to examine how community playgroups are constructed in the ECEC policy framework, in order to understand what might exclude families, and how more families can be included in community playgroups. Playgroups are a widespread and important component of early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision in Australia, where parents and carers meet weekly with their babies, toddlers and preschool childr…
Supporting family identity
LGBTQ families have to navigate parenting in a heteronormative world. Like many other parents, LGBTQ families create playgroups to support their parenting endeavour. Drawing on research into how family and parenting identity influences playgroup participation and choices, this paper reports on interviews with members of an LGBTQ playgroup in a city in Australia. The group provided a space for many LGBTQ families to be supported and nurtured in th…
Lesbians Play Football Too
The gender debate works with an analysis based on stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. These stereotypical gender roles are enforced by labelling those who step outside of them as having a non‐conventional sexuality. Thus, the cultural perception of lesbians and gay men as ‘bad’ is pivotal in the enforcing of gender roles. So, until heterosexism is dismantled sexism cannot effectively be countered. Much work to tackle gender inequalities ac…
Hypervisibility and erasure
School can’t
Stay home, stay safe? Public health assumptions about how we live with Covid
The COVID pandemic has had an uneven impact on families and communities, exacerbating existing structural disadvantage. We demonstrate that the construction of the pandemic by policymakers as primarily a medical problem has shaped the public health response in such a way as to hide the resulting lack of access to necessities for many and deterioration in people's wellbeing. We interviewed social welfare service providers in an urban area of high …
Supporting family identity
LGBTQ families have to navigate parenting in a heteronormative world. Like many other parents, LGBTQ families create playgroups to support their parenting endeavour. Drawing on research into how family and parenting identity influences playgroup participation and choices, this paper reports on interviews with members of an LGBTQ playgroup in a city in Australia. The group provided a space for many LGBTQ families to be supported and nurtured in th…
Lesbians Play Football Too
The gender debate works with an analysis based on stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. These stereotypical gender roles are enforced by labelling those who step outside of them as having a non‐conventional sexuality. Thus, the cultural perception of lesbians and gay men as ‘bad’ is pivotal in the enforcing of gender roles. So, until heterosexism is dismantled sexism cannot effectively be countered. Much work to tackle gender inequalities ac…
Lesbians Play Football Too
The gender debate works with an analysis based on stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. These stereotypical gender roles are enforced by labelling those who step outside of them as having a non‐conventional sexuality. Thus, the cultural perception of lesbians and gay men as ‘bad’ is pivotal in the enforcing of gender roles. So, until heterosexism is dismantled sexism cannot effectively be countered. Much work to tackle gender inequalities ac…
Supporting family identity
LGBTQ families have to navigate parenting in a heteronormative world. Like many other parents, LGBTQ families create playgroups to support their parenting endeavour. Drawing on research into how family and parenting identity influences playgroup participation and choices, this paper reports on interviews with members of an LGBTQ playgroup in a city in Australia. The group provided a space for many LGBTQ families to be supported and nurtured in th…
The relationship between social support and parent identity in community playgroups
Community playgroups are member-run parenting groups in Australia, aligned with early childhood services. Parents and carers meet weekly with their babies, toddlers and preschool children. Through interviews with mothers who attend community playgroups, I find that these playgroups are important sites of social support for parents. Social support is interwoven with parental and family identity, and the shift in identity when becoming a parent. Th…
Inclusion, belonging and intercultural spaces
This article employs narrative policy analysis to examine how community playgroups are constructed in the ECEC policy framework, in order to understand what might exclude families, and how more families can be included in community playgroups. Playgroups are a widespread and important component of early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision in Australia, where parents and carers meet weekly with their babies, toddlers and preschool childr…
Stay home, stay safe? Public health assumptions about how we live with Covid
The COVID pandemic has had an uneven impact on families and communities, exacerbating existing structural disadvantage. We demonstrate that the construction of the pandemic by policymakers as primarily a medical problem has shaped the public health response in such a way as to hide the resulting lack of access to necessities for many and deterioration in people's wellbeing. We interviewed social welfare service providers in an urban area of high …
Hypervisibility and erasure
What parents know
The childhood and adolescence of transgender and gender diverse children and young people (trans children) is contested in many areas, such as media, education, health, and increasingly in the political sphere. Parents and carers of trans children navigate services and societal relations in their journey to affirm their children, from happy childhood to trans adults. This paper reports on the accounts of parents of trans children in Australia. Se…
‘Uncharted territory’
Check‐Ups Before School
Children in families experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage are more likely to start school with unaddressed developmental needs than children who do not experience disadvantage. Participation in well‐child checks and developmental screening programs is low in Australian disadvantaged communities. This research explores an integrated approach to addressing this challenge by embedding place‐based child and family nurses in early childhood educati…
School can’t
Transformative change or status quo? An investigation of the Senate Inquiry recommendations on policy and practice regarding school refusal in Australia
One of the most significant challenges currently facing education in Australia, and globally, is the decline in school attendance rates, along with a growing awareness of the associated harm being done to many children in attending school environments. Much policy attention is now focused on declining attendance, including a recent Australian Government Senate Inquiry into school refusal. Using a transformational change through public policy fram…
Participation, community and affirmation
Sport and dance continue to be dominated by cis-normative gender binary practices including uniforms and administrative processes. As a result, opportunities for non-binary participation are restricted. Deploying normative resistance and inventive pragmatism, parents navigate balancing privacy and disclosure to navigate access to participation and find their place in a community
Sociology (9 works) · Political science (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Developmental psychology (6 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy (4 works) · Medicine (4 works) · Economic growth (3 works) · Identity (music (3 works)