Professor Myfanwy Maple
Professor in Social Work - School of Health
Biography
Myfanwy Maple is Professor of Social Work in the School of Health at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia. She is Director of Manna Institute, a Commonwealth funded, Regional University Network virtual research and training institute focused on mental health and wellbeing in regional communities.
For over two decades, Professor Maple’s research has focused on trauma and loss, with a particular emphasis on understanding risk and resilience following exposure to suicide. Her work has made a significant contribution to understanding vulnerability and resilience related to suicide exposure and she is currently working on the development of interventions and evaluating supports to reduce adverse outcomes related to suicide. Professor Maple’s work further extends to examining risk and resilience among vulnerable young people who have experienced significant trauma, are disengaged from society, and have declining mental health primarily through the Social Work In Schools project. Dr Maple’s focus remains on authentically including the voices of those with lived experience to better inform policy, research and practice developments.
Professor Maple is a Director on the Board of batyr. She is Deputy Chair of the National Suicide Prevention Research Fund Advisory Committee, and a past elected Director of the Board of Suicide Prevention Australia. During 2023, she is an invited member of the Federal Health Ministers National Mental Health Reform Advisory Committee. In late 2019, Professor Maple was invited to be a member of the Prime Ministers Suicide Prevention Advisors Expert Advisory Group. She has been co-chair of the International Association for Suicide Prevention Postvention and Bereavement Special Interest Group. Professor Maple is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a member of the Australian Association of Social Workers.
Qualifications
PhD, GCTE, GradCertAdolHlthWelf, BSW(Hons1) ,GAICD
Teaching Areas
- Social Work
- Social Work Honours
- Mental Health
- Research Methods
Primary Research Area/s
Suicide; Bereavement; Trauma; Mental illness/health; Young People; Social Determinants of Mental Health in Regional AreasResearch Interests
Currently supervising Higher Degree Research students in the areas of:
Professor Maple is currently supervising PhD, MPhil and Bachelor (Hons) students in areas related to the listed research areas below. She supervises mixed methods approaches, community and industry embedded evaluations, and specialises in qualitative research with a particular interest in narrative inquiry methodology.
Research interests:
- Lived, and living, experiences of suicide
- Suicide (prevention, intervention and postvention)
- Traumatic loss and grief
- Mental health and illness, particularly in regional areas
- Family and community contexts
- Indigenous issues
- Rural student education, in particular for social work
- Embedded evaluations, co-creation methods
- Qualitative methods, in particular, narrative inquiry
