Dr Vanessa McDermott is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Business at UNSW, Canberra.
Dr McDermott is a sociologist who critically assesses governance and regulation and the diversion of risk, or ‘risk shifting,’ and the impact of this for worker, public and community safety. Her research reveals that there are public safety implications when risk-oriented regulatory frameworks, with different and sometimes competing objectives conceptualise risk in different ways. Vanessa takes an innovative approach to show that risk-driven regulatory responses affect worker safety in a range of contexts, and has explored this issue in civil construction and anti-doping policies in elite sport.
Dr McDermott received her PhD in sociology from the Australian National University (ANU) and was a Research Fellow in the Energy Pipeline Cooperative Research Centre at ANU and later at RMIT. She has conducted evaluation projects in the Australian Public Service and is currently a Senior Lecturer in the School of Business at the University of New South Wales, Canberra.