Dr Cassie Pedersen

Cassie Pedersen

Position: Lecturer, Criminology & Criminal Justice
Study area: Humanities and Social Sciences
Location: Berwick Campus
Phone: 5327 6927
Email: c.pedersen@federation.edu.au
ORCID ID:  0000-0003-2779-929X

Qualifications

Doctor of Philosophy - Federation University, 2018

Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - University of Ballarat, 2012

Bachelor of Arts - Australian Catholic University, 2010

Teaching

Courses

  • Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Units

  • Explanations of Crime (CRJUS1287)
  • Justice Responses to Difference (CRJUS3303)
  • Young People: Risk to Corrections (CRJUS3202)
  • Punishment, Penalty and Rehabilitation (CRJUS2300)
  • Sociology of Deviance (SOCI2734/3734)

Biography

Cassie Pedersen is a Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice. She completed an interdisciplinary PhD in Trauma Theory in 2017 after being awarded a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in 2012.

Cassie began her teaching career across a range of disciplines within the Humanities and Social Sciences, before being appointed as a Scholarly Teaching Fellow in 2020. She assumed the position of Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice in 2022.

Cassie has presented at a range of national and international conferences on the topics of trauma, witness testimony, and the (ab)use of nonhuman animals.

Areas of expertise

Cassie’s expertise centres on exposing extraordinary harms embedded within ordinary and routine practices. This informed Cassie’s PhD thesis titled, The Immanence of Traumatic Rupture: From the Extra/Ordinary to the Originary, and her more recent analysis of the extra/ordinary harms of the industrialised production and consumption of nonhuman animals.

In her work on trauma, Cassie has investigated the tension between positing trauma as an aberrant, anomalous event and recognising it as an all-too-ordinary occurrence. In the context of green criminology, she has examined how ordinary and extraordinary harms coalesce through the use and abuse of animals. Cassie’s recent work utilises an ecofeminist lens to formulate an anti-speciesist criminology of routine animal ab/use.

Research interests

  • Anti-speciesist criminology
  • Ecofeminism
  • Critical criminology
  • Green Criminology
  • Animal Rights and Activism
  • Rural Criminology
  • Non-human victims
  • Zemiology
  • Critical animal studies
  • Trauma theory
  • Trauma-informed pedagogies

Supervision

PhDs

Current:

L. Morella - Paternal filicide in the context of separation (Associate Supervisor)

J. Pandya. Historical and contemporary responses to fraud and corruption in Australia by the Commonwealth Government (Associate Supervisor)

Completed:

J. Nicholls - Women's experiences of health care in the prison system in Victoria: Do they align with through-care principles and human rights frameworks? (Associate Supervisor)

Publications

Books

Harkness, A., Peterson, J. Bowden, M., Pedersen, C., & Donnermeyer, J. (Eds.). (2022). Encyclopedia of rural crime. Bristol University Press.

Refereed journal articles

Pedersen, C. (2026, Forthcoming). Trauma and the (im)possibility of witnessing: On the fractured subject of testimony. Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 31(5).

Pedersen, C. (2025, Forthcoming). Disastrous dichotomies: An ecofeminist approach to anti-speciesist rural criminology. International Journal of Rural Criminology.

Burrell, S. R. & Pedersen, C. (2024). From men's violence to an ethic of care: Ecofeminist contributions to green criminology. Journal of Criminology. Online First. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26338076241293145

Pedersen, C. & White, R. (2021). Discourses of discord: Animal activism and moral judgement. International Criminology, 1(13), 178-192. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43576-021-00027-w

Book chapters

Pedersen, C. (2019). Unspeakable banality: Discourse in dispute. In K. Dihal (Ed.), Perspectives on evil: From banality to genocide (pp. 31–52). Brill Press.

Pedersen, C. (2019). Encountering trauma ‘too soon’ and ‘too late.’ In D. Schaub, J. Linder, K. Novak, S. Tam & C. Zanini (Eds.), Topography of trauma: Fissures, disruptions and transfigurations (pp. 25–44). Brill Press.

Pedersen, C. (2019). Ruptures in understanding: The banality of evil and the ‘differend.’ In K. Bone & R. Grieg (Eds.), I want to do bad things: Modern interpretations of evil (pp. 21–31). Brill Press.

Pedersen, C. (2017). Screening tourist encounters: Penal spectatorship and the visual cultures of Auschwitz. In J. Piché, S. Hodgkinson, J.Z. Wilson & K. Walby (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of prison tourism (pp. 131–151). Palgrave Macmillan.

Pedersen, C. (2013). The gender panopticon from within. In J. Lunn, S. Bizjak & S. Summers (Eds.), Changing facts: Changing minds; changing worlds (pp. 270–282). Black Swan Press.

Reference Works

Pedersen, C. (2025). Non-speciesist criminology. In R. White (Ed.), Encyclopedia of environmental crime (pp. 341–346). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Pedersen, C. (2022). People who identify as LGBTIQA+. In A. Harkness, J. Peterson, M. Bowden, C. Pedersen & J. Donnermeyer (Eds.), Encyclopedia of rural crime. Bristol University Press.

Reports

Camilleri, M. & Pedersen, C. (2019). Hear us: The experiences of persons with complex communication needs in accessing justice. Victorian Legal Services Board + Commissioner.

Patil, T., Mummery, J. Pedersen, C. & Camilleri, M. (2019). Exploring the lived experiences of migrants in regional Victoria, Australia. Evolve Strategic Multicultural Capacity Building Partnerships.

Patil, T., Mummery, J. Pedersen, C. & Ramsay, G. (2018). Report on the City of Ballarat’s Multicultural Ambassador Program (MAP). City of Ballarat Council.

Associations

  • Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology (ANZSOC)
  • International Society for the Study of Rural Crime (ISSRC)