Karen Menzies

Karen Menzies has a PhD titled, "And it's Not History. It's Now: Embedding a Trauma Framework into the Practice of Welfare Practitioners who work with Aboriginal Families in the NSW Child Protection Sector".

Karen has a Bachelor and Master of Social Work, and also a Master of Medical Science. Karen is an Indigenous woman from the Wonnarua people in the Hunter Valley, in New South Wales. She has both personal and professional working knowledge of the traumatic impact of forcible child removal in the Australian Indigenous community.

Karen has worked as a Social Worker on the Stolen Generations Inquiry at the Australian Human Rights Commission, where she was witness to hundreds of very personal and painful testimonies from Indigenous people who had been forcibly removed from their families. For many years, Karen worked with the NSW Department of Community Services and then as a Social Work Consultant designing curriculum, delivering education and training, and conducting research with education, health, legal and welfare organisations and practitioners across NSW.

Between 2009-2018, Karen worked as a full-time academic at the Wollotuka Institute and in the Discipline of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health, School of Medicine and Public Health, at the University of Newcastle.