Maureen Cole B.A.(Melit.) (1980), B.Soc.Wk. (Hons.) (Monash) (1983), Ph.D. (UEA) (2003) worked as social worker at Caritas Malta before taking up a lecturing post at the University of Malta in 1988.
She was coordinator of the Institute of Social Welfare (1992-1993) and of the Social Work and Social Administration Unit within the Department of Public Policy (1997-2002) of the University of Malta. She was Head of the Department of Social Policy and Social Work between 2009 and 2016. She served as Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy between 2009 and 2012. In 2012, she was appointed Dean of the newly established Faculty for Social Wellbeing at the University of Malta and occupied this position up to 2016.
Maureen has held and continues to hold various appointments at the University of Malta. She sat on the University’s Gender Issues Committee (1994-1998), has held an appointment as Advisor on sexual harassment since 1994 and as Rector’s delegate for International Students’ Wellbeing between 2006-2012. She also sat on the University’s Admissions Board for a number of years.
She is is currently serving as Rector's Delegate for Student Wellness.
She is Chair of the National Institute for Childhood which is a research entity of the President’s Foundation for the Wellbeing of Society (Malta) (2014- to date). She is currently leading a research project which is exploring children's relationships in public open spaces.
She holds a Social Work warrant and is a long-standing member of the Maltese Association of Social Workers.
Maureen has sat on a number of National Boards and Committees and has contributed significantly to the development of social work practice in Malta especially in relation to her research focus which is the practice and experience of social work supervision.
Her teaching focus is the theory of social work, although she also contributes to the tutoring of students on practice placements. This is also complemented by the supervision of students' dissertations at undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral levels.
