Marietta Martinovic

Marietta Martinovic is an Australian criminologist and social justice advocate. She currently serves as an associate professor in criminology and justice studies at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). She was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2025 for "distinguished service to criminology".

She is the founder of the first Australian Prison exchange program, called Inside-Out, where both incarcerated people and students of RMIT take an elective class and 'learn as equals', and subsequently apply their knowledge, allowing better transitioning into community after prison.

Early life and education Martinovic moved from Bosnia to Australia at the age of 13, where her family were war refugees due to civil war.

Martinovic has a Bachelor of Arts, a master's degree and a PhD, all from RMIT. She also received the Sir John Minogue Medal. In 2007, she took part in training for the Inside-Out Instructor course, held within the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program's international headquarters, located in Philadelphia, at Temple University. The programs lead to reports which can then influence prison policy around incarceration. As part of her research on solutions around the increasing populations of people within prisons, she wore an electronic monitoring bracelet.

She has conducted research on prison inmates, and positive empowerment programs, designed to prevent prisoners from returning to criminal activity. Similarly, she was involved in electronic monitoring of returned travellers, quarantining in hotels, or at home wearing electronic monitoring devices, during the Covid pandemic.

Publications Martinovic has conducted numerous studies on prison life, as well as digital devices in prisons, in addition to conducting meta-analyses on positive improvements on prison life. She has publications on diversity and equity, prison life from a women's viewpoint, university student's and prisoners viewpoints of studying together, as well as a meta-analysis on interventions.

Selected articles

Selected chapters Martinovic, Marietta; Liddell, Marg (2020). Learning behind prison bars: University students and prisoners' experiences of studying together. RMIT University. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Criminology. Chapter.

Media Martinovic has discussed her work on various forms of media including the ABC, discussing the Inside Out program and its impact on prisoners and students, the Castlemaine Mail, on how her teaching of criminology informs policy, as well as on Channel 9, discussing crime rates in youth.

Awards and honours 2017 – RMIT Vice Chancellor's award for Educational Partnerships and Collaborations with Other Organisations. 2024 – Triple E awards -–Impactful Collaboration of the Year Award. 2025 – Australia Day Order of Australia.