Linda J. Graham

Associate Professor in Education, Queensland University of Technology

Linda Graham PhD. is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at QUT. Her research interests concern the role of education policy and schooling practices in the medicalization of childhood and the improvement of responses to children who are difficult to teach.

Dr Graham completed her doctoral study, titled “Schooling Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders: educational systems of formation and the ‘disorderly’ school child” at Queensland University of Technology in 2007. Of particular interest was how schooling practices and discourses may be contributing to the increased diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Since graduating with the 2007 Faculty of Education Outstanding Thesis Award and the 2008 Australian Association of Research (AARE) Excellence in Doctoral Research Award, Linda has been awarded 4 successive research fellowships.

These highly competitive awards have included a postdoctoral fellowship at The University of Sydney (2007-2008), a Macquarie University Research Fellowship (The political economy of special educational needs: international trends and policy developments, 2009-2011), an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Research Fellowship (A critical analysis of the increase in diagnosis of special educational needs in NSW government schools, 2010-2012), and most recently, a QUT Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellowship (Destination elsewhere: a longitudinal study of pathways into separate special educational settings for students with disruptive behaviour, 2013-2015).

In 2011, she was awarded a second ARC Discovery project grant (Tracking the experiences of students enrolled in special schools for challenging behaviour and their reintegration to mainstream, $110,000) with Dr Penny Van Bergen & Dr Naomi Sweller (Macquarie University); one of only 19 successful proposals across Division 13: Education.

She has also partnered with international collaborators on a comparative project funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Council of Canada with Professor Markku Jahnukainen, University of Alberta & University of Helsinki (Analysing the current state and change of special education in New South Wales, Finland and Alberta, CAD 100,358) and is partner investigator on a 2012-2013 Leverhulme International Network grant with Professor Sheila Riddell from the University of Edinburgh (Special Education & Policy Change: A study of six jurisdictions, GBP £97,511).

In the same year, Linda was named Macquarie University Early Career Researcher of the Year, and received both the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) Paul Bourke Award and the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) Early Career Research Award.

Linda is currently leading a prospective longitudinal study tracking 200 prep children through to the end of Grade 5 (funded by the Financial Markets Foundation for Children and the Australian Research Council, $509,000) with A/Prof Sue Walker and Dr Sonia White (School of Early Childhood, QUT), Dr Kathy Cologon (Institute of Early Childhood, Macquarie University), Prof Pamela Snow (LaTrobe University), and Prof Robert Pianta (University of Virginia).

She has appeared in numerous print, radio and television media and is a strong advocate that inclusive education is a foundation platform for broader social inclusion and the development of an inclusive democracy.