People

Dr Milena Heinsch (Leader)

Dr Milena Heinsch is an Early Career Researcher (ECR) in Social Work. Guided by a passion for forging stronger links between research and practice, she completed her PhD on knowledge utilisation in social work in 2013. Milena's latest work aims to evaluate whether an internet-based therapeutic intervention improves quality of life and functional outcomes for young people with functional abdominal pain. Her research achievements are evidenced by her receipt of the Dean’s Award for Research Excellence in 2017.

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Associate Professor Caragh Brosnan (Leader)

Dr Caragh Brosnan is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology. Caragh's research focuses broadly on understanding how different kinds of knowledge come to be valued in scientific and health professional practice and education. She has explored these issues in a range of empirical contexts, including in medical education, neuroscience and nursing, and, with the support of an ARC DECRA, in complementary medicine education. She is co-editor of the Handbook of the Sociology of Medical Education (2009, Routledge) and Bourdieusian Prospects (2017, Routledge).

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Dr Rebecca Beirne

Dr Rebecca Beirne is a Senior Lecturer in Film, Media and Cultural Studies. Rebecca's current research project interrogates the representation of people with mental health conditions in the media. She is the author of Lesbians in Television and Text after the Millennium (Palgrave 2008), the editor of Televising Queer Women: A Reader (Palgrave 2007 and 2012) and co-editor (with James Bennett) of Making Film and Television Histories: Australia and New Zealand (IB Tauris, 2012).

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Dr Nicole Byrne

Dr Nicole Byrne

Dr Nicole Byrne had significant experience as a clinical speech pathologist and health manager before commencing as a Senior Lecturer in Speech Pathology at the University of Newcastle in 2015. Nicole’s main research interests relate to the factors that influence people to enter into speech pathology and related health careers, including personal and professional exposures, personality, interests and altruism. By understanding the factors that motivate career choice we can examine ways to encourage diversity within the health professions in the future.

Dr Euridice Charon-Cardona

Dr Euridice Charon-Cardona is a Conjoint Fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Science. She holds a Master degree in history from the University of Tashkent, Uzbekistan and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Newcastle. Euridice is currently researching Soviet medical practices during the Second World War.

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Dr Julia Coffey

Dr Julia Coffey is a Lecturer in Sociology. Her research is focused on issues relating to young people’s health, gender and the body. Julia has published on young people’s body work practices, body image and identity. She is the author/editor of two books, Body Work: Youth, Gender and Health (2016, Routledge) and Learning Bodies: The Body in Youth and Childhood Studies (Springer, 2016, edited with Shelley Budgeon and Helen Cahill).

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Dr Sally Hewat

Dr Sally Hewat is recognised nationally and internationally as an academic leader in the preparation of students for speech pathology practice. She has a particular research interest in the disorder of stuttering. However, more recently her research has focused on speech pathology in majority world countries, intercultural practice and education, clinical education and simulated learning.

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Dr S. A. Hamed Hosseini

Dr S. A. Hamed Hosseini, PhD in ‘Sociology and Global Studies’ from the Australian National University (2006), is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and the author of Conscientious Sociology (2013), and Alternative Globalizations (2011). His main field of inquiry is shaped around the social impacts of capitalist globalization (on health and well-living, public attitudes, environment, and social inequalities) and the progressive grassroots responses to current global crises (i.e. the post-capitalist alternative praxes). He is the chief editor and co-founder of ‘Common Alternatives’ international network.

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Dr Kathleen McPhillips

Dr Kathleen McPhillips is a sociologist of religion and gender and has published and researched extensively in this field. She is currently attending the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as part of a larger project on gender, religion and trauma in the Catholic Church. Recently, her work has been published in the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, as well as a number of books. Kathleen is also a clinical psychotherapist working in private practice.

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Dr Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen

Dr Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen is an ARC DECRA Fellow researching the impact of World War Two on the theory and practice of psychiatry. Her current ARC-funded project, ‘Unquiet Minds: Psychiatry in World War Two and its aftermaths’, aims to provide the first comprehensive account of the consequences of that conflict for psychiatric theory and practice by focusing on the ways in which the stringencies of total war forged new patient cohorts on the battlefield and the home front and thus implicated psychiatry in the social and economic projects of the post-war world.

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Dr Liz Spencer

Dr Liz Spencer

Dr Liz Spencer is a qualified speech pathologist with a special interest in the application of linguistic analyses in communication disorders across the lifespan and in healthy ageing adults. Her current research involves exploration of the effects of language on ageing, using methods drawn from clinical linguistics, including computerised linguistic analysis methods. Liz has a special interest in clinical linguistics, discourse analysis and sociolinguistic analysis methods in clinical practice in communication disorders across the lifespan to improve functionally relevant communication outcomes.

Dr Ann Taylor

Dr Ann Taylor

Dr Ann Taylor’s research addresses the sociology of reproduction and the sociology of professionalization. She is concerned with the intersection between health policy, gender and social justice and the way in which these issues can best be taught to health professional students. Ann is interested in researching changes in social policy and the delivery of care including evidence-based medicine, primary health care and consumer-directed care.

Dr Rachael Unicomb

With a background in speech pathology, Dr Rachael Unicomb is a clinical researcher with a translational research interest in the communication of young children (paediatrics), and the complexities of co-occurring communication diagnoses. Rachael has published both quantitative and qualitative research in this area and examples include when stuttering co-occurs with speech sound disorders. Rachael has also published in the area of the significance of clinical outcome data (specifically case studies/series), a new method for analysing this type of data for statistical significance.

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Ms Joanne Walters

Ms Joanne Walters is a qualified speech pathologist with a particular interest in exploring and engaging with diversity in clinical education through the use of innovative models of clinical education that enhance the student learning experience. Current research projects include evaluation of a range of clinical education models and the use of simulation.

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Ms Gwendalyn Webb

Ms Gwendalyn Webb's research interests include early child language development and early intervention in multi-cultural contexts. Through her engagement with the local Aboriginal community, she has developed a particular interest in Australian Aboriginal children’s language and communication development in the early childhood years.

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