Dr Kelly Soderstrom

I am a Lecturer in Business Management, Research Fellow, and member of the Public Service Research Group in the School of Business at UNSW, Canberra. I often speak publicly on topics ranging from refugee and asylum policy to institutional ethics.

I research social, political, legal, and economic borders through analysing how organisations demarcate, traverse, reinforce, and challenge boundaries among people and states. Such bordering practices range from bureaucratic labels which govern access to resources, to international humanitarian protection regimes which govern access to asylum. My PhD thesis analysed how the German government navigated the boundaries of expected policy responses to the 2015 Asylum Crisis, whereas my current research investigates how public sector managers negotiate the boundaries of merit in human resource practices. I am especially interested in using philosophical explanations and applied, real world analysis to understand how people, organisations, and states construct boundaries and use borders to achieve policy aims. 

My interdisciplinary research interests include public policy design and implementation, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, refugee and forced displacement studies, and institutional ethics. I am particularly interested in the intersection of non-governmental organisations and asylum governance in Australia and the European Union. I have published in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Advances in Management Accounting and the Journal of Citizenship and Globalisation Studies as well as media outlets such as The Conversation, Pursuit, and Election Watch. I have also written policy commentary for NGOs such as the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and the Australian Institute of International Affairs.