Dwayne Antojado is a Lecturer (Online) in Sociology and Criminology at Adelaide University, as well as an academic in the European Studies Program, School of Social Sciences, Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. He completed his studies at Griffith University and the University of Melbourne.
 
Dwayne’s research unfold along two interconnected streams. First, he interrogates how lived experience with the criminal legal system, especially imprisonment, cultivates distinct yet often marginalised epistemic standpoints, giving shape to the emergent sub-field of 'lived experience criminology.' His contributions to lived experience scholarship engage questions on representation, co-optation, epistemic justice, and the inseperability between academic enquiry and activist praxis. Grounded in auto/ethnographic methods and informed by his own incarceration in Australia, his research also seeks to illuminate the affective, atmospheric, and sensorial textures of carceral and post-carceral spaces. He is co-editor (with Danica Darley and Matthew Maycock) of 'Beyond Autoethnography: Lived Experience Criminology' (Routledge, 2025), and co-author (with Gillian Buck, Lucy Campbell, Kemi, Natasha Ryan, and James Windle) of 'Lived Experience in Criminal Justice: Research, Education, Practice and Activism' (Routledge, 2026).
 
Second, Dwayne examines penal /custodial contexts, attending to the ways prisons are encountered by marginalised communities, like women, young people, and LGBTQIA+ communities. In partnership with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australian Aid), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and local academic collaborators, he is presently evaluating the availability and efficacy of programme-based interventions for persons incarcerated for violent extremist offences. Concurrently, with support from the Australian National University's Philippines Institute, he is co-leading a companion study that traces and explicates how sentenced women in Philippine penal institutions endure and navigate the manifold 'pains of imprisonment.' In addition to his research in prisons, Dwayne also writes about 'justice-affected' spaces impacted by state violence, and the ways in which repair can not only be achieved through legal instruments and provisions but also through the affective and sensory dimensions of time and space.
 
Dwayne’s research is also particularly concerned with the politics of representation and participation. He examines the conditions under which people with lived experience are invited into academic, institutional, and policy spaces, asking whether they are genuinely supported, fairly remunerated, and able to influence decisions, or whether their involvement remains symbolic and extractive. His work therefore engages questions of epistemic justice, co-optation, credibility, voice, and power, while also insisting that lived experience participation must be accompanied by concrete organisational structures: fair payment, accessible pathways into employment and leadership, appropriate training and mentoring, institutional support, meaningful governance roles, and accountability for how lived experience knowledge is used. 
 
Alongside his academic work, Dwayne is a member of Penal Reform International’s Global Group of Experts by Experience. He has worked with a range of international, governmental, academic, and civil society organisations to embed lived experience knowledge within organisational decision-making, policy development, research, education, and justice reform. His collaborators have included the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Penal Reform International, governmental organisations in the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as universities, community organisations, and international justice partners. A key part of this applied work involves supporting organisations to move beyond broad commitments to inclusion towards practical and durable forms of lived experience leadership. Dwayne has contributed to the development of lived experience policies, engagement frameworks, advisory structures, workforce pathways, training programmes, and organisational tools that help institutions assess their readiness to work ethically and meaningfully with people who bring direct experience of the criminal legal system. 
 
Beyond these institutional and organisational engagements, Dwayne’s work also turns to the broader justice landscapes shaped by state violence, exclusion, and institutional neglect. He is interested in forms of repair that extend beyond formal legal remedies or procedural reform, asking how justice might also be cultivated through recognition, dignity, care, memory, relationships, and the affective and sensory organisation of time and space. Across his scholarship, teaching, and advocacy, he advances work that is politically engaged and grounded in the everyday realities of those whose lives have been shaped by criminal justice institutions. Ultimately, his work seeks to broaden who is recognised as capable of producing knowledge about justice, and to ensure that those most affected by punishment are not merely spoken about, but are able to participate meaningfully in imagining and shaping more just futures.
 
At the Adelaide University, Dwayne teaches into the Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and the Bachelor of Psychological Science and Sociology programmes. He has taught both undergraduate and postgraduate subjects across various universities in Australia.