Jo Mensinga

During her 15 years in direct practice before joining the academy, Jo specialised in relationship counselling and was actively involved in women’s issues, child abuse and domestic violence. She has researched in the area of social work professional practice including child protection decision-making, mentoring, supervision practices, and practitioner learning and development. Jo has also explored social work career choice and decision-making processes. From this collection of work Jo has developed an interest in body-reflexivity.

Jo is a qualified yoga teacher with a diploma from the International Yoga Teachers Association. She has undertaken study tours to the United States and Italy examining trauma and its impact on professional reflection and the use of yoga as an intervention.

Jo works from a qualitative methodological approach including narrative inquiry, organic inquiry, case study, thematic analysis, and the study of social positioning in stories. She is an active member of international discussion groups on the process of narrative inquiry. She has undertaken research with industry particularly on learning and development in child placement with government and on mentoring with a nongovernment peak organisation. Her current interest is researching the contribution yoga and embodiment can make to practitioner reflection and well-being.