Adjuncts

Tom McClean

Tom McClean is Research and Social Policy Program Head at Uniting, which is the social care and advocacy arm of the Synod of the Uniting Church in NSW and the ACT. It provides services to vulnerable and disadvantaged people across the life course, from parenting programs and early learning, to child protection, out of home care, disability services, family law counselling and mediation, social programs for older people, home and community aged care, retirement living and residential aged care. Dr McClean leads evaluations of Uniting's practices and services, research into aspects of disadvantage and vulnerability, and social policy analysis. His team undertakes some of this work in-house, and some in partnership with universities. Uniting has one of the largest external research partnership programs in the social care sector.

Prior to joining Uniting, Dr McClean worked in evaluation, policy and investigation roles in the NSW Government, and in the financial sector in London. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics, and his personal academic research interests involve social research methods and the role of information in governance of large organisations.

Anne Dwyer

Adjunct Fellow

Anne Dwyer is an Adjunct Fellow of TeEACH. She completed her PhD at Western Sydney University, in the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development (2017). With a background in psychology, and experience in laboratory-based infant research, Anne’s doctoral research investigated language experience and other predictors of later vocabulary development in infants growing up in Western Sydney.

Anne’s postdoctoral work at MARCS involved child-focused research projects in the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language and the HEARing Cooperative Research Centre, and collaborative work with the NSW Centre for Work, Health and Safety.

Anne’s interests have led her to the non-government sector, where she leads projects at Uniting focused on providing evidence and analysis to inform practice improvement, service innovation and advocacy. Anne is co-leading a number of projects under a Western Sydney University-Uniting research partnership focused on children, youth and families.