Research Team

Associate Professor
Kathomi Gatwiri


  • Principle Investigator

    Dr Kathomi Gatwiri is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health at SCU, an ARC DECRA Fellow at the Centre for Children & Young People (CCYP), President of the peak body Australian Women & Gender Studies Association (AWGSA) and a practising psychotherapist. Kathomi is one of Australia's leading Afro-diasporic scholars whose award-winning interdisciplinary research investigates the intersecting topics of racial trauma, belonging, blackness, and migranthood. Since being awarded her PhD in 2017, she has attracted over $1,500,000 in highly competitive research funding. She has published over 100 traditional and Non-traditional research outputs, including the books African Womanhood and Incontinent Bodies and Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia.

    Dr Gatwiri has received numerous awards for excellence in research and community service, including a Vice-Chancellor's Award in research excellence and outstanding community impact (2022), a Vice-Chancellor Early Career Researcher Award for outstanding research achievement (2019) and a Community Impact Award as 'Kenyan of the year' (2017). She is the Founder and Director of 'Healing Together', a service that provides accessible, culturally affirming therapeutic support for people impacted by racial trauma.

    “My research approach is grounded in decolonising methodologies that attempt to develop transformative knowledge about and for those people who are assigned categories of difference. I see my research strategies as a tool for centring marginalised knowledge, which is not just about producing 'knowledge' but an opportunity to think critically about how and who we research.”

Samara Kim
김수임


  • PhD Candidate & Research Assistant

    Samara is an academic researcher, writer, artist, and community organiser whose work explores race, whiteness, coloniality, and child rights, with a particular focus on transracial-transnational adoption—a topic that is both personal and political.

    Samara has a Masters in International Development and is currently a PhD candidate. Her current research project, Families for babies or babies for families? Manufactured orphans in South Korean intercountry adoption to Australia”, critically examines human rights and racial dignity within Australian transracial-transnational adoption. Her work is grounded in lived experience and a critical adoptee standpoint, which she believes in essential in any research that involves human beings.

    Her research is part of the broader ARC DECRA project Beyond Inclusion: Belonging and Racial Dignity for Africans in Australia, led by Associate Professor Kathomi Gatwiri.

    She can also be found at the Australian Women and Gender Studies Association (AWGSA), Korean Adoptees in Australia (KAIAN), and KADS Connect.

    "I am so thrilled to work alongside A/Prof Kathomi Gatwiri to explore what it means to live with or without Racial Dignity. My work in transracial-transnational adoption highly relates to Racial Dignity as many adoptees find themselves caught in the margins between race, language, culture, and transnationality in Australia."

Advisory Committee