Lecturer of Community Services
Advancing social justice
and education through
lived experience, research, and advocacy.
Educator | Researcher | Lived-Experience Advocate
Research on justice and education, informed by lived experience of the system.
About
Educator, Researcher & Advocate
Dr Lukas Carey is an educator and researcher working on alternative education, justice reform, and trauma-informed practice for young people at risk.
His work sits within convict criminology — a field in which people who have experienced the justice system contribute to research as researchers, not only as subjects. Dr Carey has lived experience of incarceration, and it shapes the questions he asks: what education inside and after prison actually achieves, how policy is made about people who are rarely consulted in making it, and what the literature misses when that perspective is absent.
He holds a Doctor of Education and has published in the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, the Alternative Law Journal, and the Journal of Criminal Justice Education, as well as a chapter in Histories and Philosophies of Carceral Education. He is a keynote speaker and TEDx presenter.
Convict criminology
Convict criminology is an international scholarly tradition built on a methodological argument: that a literature written entirely from outside the justice system carries a predictable blind spot, and that the people best placed to identify it have historically been excluded from producing it.
Qualifications
Doctor of Education
Full qualifications
- Master of Education
- Master of Business/Sports Management
- Master's Certificate in Business/Law of Sport
- Graduate Certificate of Arts (Professional Writing)
- Bachelor of Education
- Certificate IV in Training and Assessment
Research Focus
Research
Current research
Completed research
Alternative and individualised education in the reduction of juvenile recidivism
How individualised and alternative education pathways reduce juvenile recidivism and support rehabilitation. Published as a research report in 2024.
Completed — report published 2024
Sacrifice and Compromise
The lived experiences of adolescent girls in regional Victoria who have left organised sport. Completed as a Doctor of Education thesis in 2017.
Completed — doctoral thesis, 2017
The people who have been through the system are the ones most likely to see what it is actually doing. The research is better when they are the ones asking the questions.
Scholarship
Recent Publications
Get in Touch
Let's Connect
For research collaborations, media enquiries, speaking engagements, or postgraduate supervision.
Contact Dr Carey