Learn more about our remarkable researchers

Our network comprises dozens of researchers.

Here you can learn more about each and dive deeper into their research interests and accomplishments.

Network researchers

Here you can search our researchers by name, or sort by their research themes or academic group.

Sakinah Alhadad

Dr Sakinah Alhadad

As an academic working at the intersection of psychology, higher education and learning sciences, Sakinah takes the intersectional approach to understanding and working towards justice-oriented futures for higher education, with a focus on people and communities from underserved, minoritised backgrounds and circumstances (e.g. racialised, LGBTQ+, first generation university students). Her research activities are primarily centred on the question of epistemic diversity and fluency; of how knowledge may be constructed, evaluated, integrated, limited, and enhanced with diverse ways of knowing.

Debbie Bargallie

Dr Debbie Bargallie

Dr Debbie Bargallie is a descendent of the Kamilaroi and Wonnarua peoples of NSW. She is a postdoctoral senior research fellow with the Griffith Institute for Educational Research and is also a member of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. Debbie holds a Doctor of Philosophy from the Queensland University of Technology and researches on race and racism. Her book Unmasking the racial contract: Indigenous voices on racism in the Australian Public Service (2020) is published by AIATSIS Aboriginal Studies Press.

Lyndel Bates

Dr Lyndel Bates

Lyndel is an award-winning researcher and an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Awardee (DECRA) with the Griffith Criminology Institute. She has more than 15 years' experience in leading and managing research projects, with a decade of this in senior public policy and research roles for the Queensland Parliamentary Service. Lyndel has research and teaching interests predominantly in policing (particularly road policing), work-integrated learning and translating research into policy.

Chantelle Bayes

Dr Chantelle Bayes

Chantelle is a researcher, writer and academic whose research interests include urban nature, ecofeminism, critical animal studies and contemporary literature. Her work has been published in Axon, Meniscus, TEXT journal and M/C journal and she has a forthcoming book with Liverpool University Press titled Reimagining Urban Nature: Literary Imaginaries for Posthuman Cities.

Helen Berents

Dr Helen Berents

Helen Berents is a feminist scholar whose work is interested in the participation of young people in peace and conflict, everyday approaches to peacebuilding, and local-global relations in peace and security governance. Her work is motivated by a genuine belief in the importance of recognising the contributions and capacities of children and youth in navigating violence and building peace. She is currently an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow in the School of Government and International Relations.

Susan Best

Professor Susan Best

Susan is an art historian with expertise in critical theory and modern and contemporary art. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the the Humanities. She is the author of Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde (2011); Reparative Aesthetics: Witnesssing in Contemporary Art Photography (2016); and It's not personal: Post 60s body art and performance (2021).

Naomi Birdthistle

Associate Professor Naomi Birdthistle

Naomi’s research focuses on empowering women entrepreneurs and her research has had great impact so far. She has contributed to an OECD report on Australia's policy and measures in facilitating entrepreneurship by women and how its policies can be strengthened. Her research has influenced the Sarawak government to commit funds to a one-stop shop for women entrepreneurs and to provide targeted support for them. Over MYR15m has been committed to this fund. Since its inception, over 1500 have been assisted.

Diti Bhattacharya

Dr Diti Bhattacharya

Diti is a resident adjunct research fellow at Griffith's Centre for Social and Cultural Research. She holds a PhD in Human Geography from the School of Humanities Languages, and Social Science at Griffith University. Her field of expertise includes human and cultural geography, critical heritage studies and geographies of intersectional feminism.

Helen Bromhead

Dr Helen Bromhead

Helen Bromhead is a linguist who explores how people talk about climate change, extreme weather and landscape. She is a Research Fellow in Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, a project lead in the Climate Action Beacon and a founding member of Griffith’s Research Group on Language Issues in Public Messaging.

Caitlin Byrne

Professor Caitlin Byrne

Caitlin began her career as a diplomat and only later found her way to academia, with some twists and turns along the way. Today she's the Director of the Griffith Asia Institute and a Faculty Fellow with USC. Caitlin is deeply interested in the ways that diplomacy and dialogue shape the interactions and preferences of people, communities and nations across the Asia-Pacific. She's a practitioner-scholar most at home in that blurry space where academic inquiry and applied practice meet.

Elaine Chiao Ling Yang

Dr Elaine Chiao Ling Yang

Elaine's work focuses on empowering women in tourism, social impact of tourism and Asian tourism. Some of the projects she has worked on include digital competency training for women tourism entrepreneurs in developing countries, gender-based violence in tourism, gendered representations of athletes on social media and Asian solo female travellers. Elaine was identified as an Emerging Tourism Scholar by e-Review of Tourism Research. She is also a volunteer administrator of Women Academics in Tourism.

Nadine Connell

Associate Professor Nadine Connell

Nadine is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and fellow with the Griffith Criminology Institute. Her research focuses on juvenile delinquency, specifically in the domain of school safety. Her work examines the aetiology of school-based violence victimisation and perpetration as well as more extreme forms of youth violence, including weapon carrying, school shootings and targeted violence. She also works with schools and communities to implement and evaluate prevention and intervention strategies.

Leah Coutts

Dr Leah Coutts

Leah is a Lecturer at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University. Her research has three foci: inclusive pedagogies in tertiary music education, with a focus on students as partners; music's role in advocating for social change through investigating the 'activist-musician'; and the potential made possible through their intersection.

Karen Crawley

Dr Karen Crawley

Karen is an interdisciplinary researcher in law and the humanities, with a particular interest in combatting state violence and thinking through critical feminist approaches to law and justice. She has published on legal entanglements with theatre, photography, street art and television, the theatricality of police actions and courtroom spaces, and the politics of extra-legal responses to sexual violence.

Sara Davies

Professor Sara Davies

Sara is the co-convenor of the Gender Equality Research Network with Professor Susan Harris Rimmer. Her research career has been devoted to identifying the political conditions that deny humans access to civil, economic and social human rights. Her research focuses on situations where humans face immense vulnerability: disease outbreaks events, gender-based and sexual violence in conflict, and forced displacement. Sara has been an Australian Research Council Discovery Australian Postgraduate Award Scholar (2008-2012) and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2014-2018).

Jacqueline Drew

Dr Jacqueline Drew

Jacqueline has more than 20 years' experience in policing as a practitioner and researcher. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Managers and Leaders, as well as an organisational psychologist, working to improve police mental health, police leadership, understand career paths of women police and promote best practice in police promotion systems. She also provides expert advice to law enforcement related to cyber-crime victimisation and conducts training with police detectives in cyber-crime victimology.

Roslyn Donnellan-Fernandez

Dr Roslyn Donnellan-Fernandez

Roslyn’s research focus is on maternity reform, health funding and systems integration to improve public maternity services access and equity to continuity of midwifery models for vulnerable and under-served groups. Her current work concentrates on mapping access to midwifery care and maternity models. She is a member of Transforming Maternity Care Collaborative and actively engaged in developing population health tools to assist scale-up of midwifery models as a public health strategy.

Outi Donovan

Dr Outi Donovan

Outi's research career has been devoted to identifying the political conditions that deny humans access to civil, economic and social human rights. Her research focuses on situations where humans face immense vulnerability: disease outbreaks events, gender-based and sexual violence in conflict, and forced displacement.

Contact us

If you'd like to know more about our network or get involved, contact Program Co-Convenors: Sara Davies and Susan Harris Rimmer.