Academy Fellow

Dan Woodman is a sociologist who studies youth, young adulthood and intergenerational relationships. His research used mixed-methods longitudinal approaches to investigate continuity and change in young lives and what this means for patterns of inequality. From this foundation studying young lives, he has also contributed to the sociology of work, sociology of health, political economy and to sociological theory. 

Dan’s writing conceptualising generational change and the new social conditions shaping the lives of young adults is internationally influential, shaping key debates in the interdisciplinary field of youth studies. His empirical and theoretical contributions have helped move the field beyond linear notions of youth transitions to adulthood to ask how opportunities and inequalities are actively reproduced for and experienced by contemporary youth in the context of economic and social change. His most recent research as focused on changes in intergenerational relationships and the growing influence of intergenerational support (financial transfers and in-kind support) during young adulthood on life course outcomes. 

Dan works at the University of Melbourne, as the TR Ashworth Professor in Sociology within the School of Social and Political Sciences and has taught the introduction to Sociology subject at Melbourne since 2012. He was previously within the Sociology Discipline at the Australian National University and has had visiting appointments at the University of British Columbia, University of Glasgow, and University of Newcastle, UK. Prior to his academic career, Dan spent several years as an intellectual disability support worker and worked in the Victorian Public Service.  

Dan also regularly contributes to both the Australian and international media on radio, TV and in print, covering a broad variety of topics concerning youth and age, inequality, culture and intergenerational processes of change and reproduction. He is turned to by journalists around the world to add nuance to debates about generational differences and to counter stereotypes about the generations. He has also contributed to the policy process within Australia across employment regulation, higher education and youth policy. 

Dan has been President of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in Australia (CHASS), The Australian Sociological Association (TASA), the Research Committee for the Sociology of Youth (RC34) within the International Sociological Association (ISA) and has been on the general Executive Committee of the ISA. He has been co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Youth Studies, the leading international journal in his field, since 2017. 

He is also the founder of Social Sciences Week, a major public engagement activity for the Social Sciences in Australia led by ASSA. He also led the coalition of social scientists that supported the formation of the Parliamentary Friends of Social Sciences within the Federal Parliament. 

1. Woodman, D., Maire, Q., & Cook, J. (2024) ‘Who is receiving financial transfers from family during young adulthood in Australia?’ Journal of Sociology, 60(2), 399-418.

2. Woodman, D. (2022) ‘Generational change and intergenerational relationships in the context of the asset economy’, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 23:1, 55-69, builds the conceptual foundation for the proposed fellowship

3. Woodman, D., & Threadgold, S. (2021) This is Sociology: London: Sage 

4. Woodman, D., & Cook, J. (2019) ‘The new gendered labour of synchronisation: Temporal labour in the new world of work’, Journal of Sociology, vol. 55, no. 4: 762-777.

5. Woodman, D., & Wyn, J. (2015) Youth and Generation: Rethinking change and inequality in the lives of young people, London: Sage