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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Associate Professor Molly Dragiewicz
Molly is an internationally award-winning criminologist who studies violence and gender. She is currently researching technology-facilitated coercive control and domestic violence in the context of post-separation parenting. She is highly involved in interdisciplinary, applied, collaborative research with community organisations working to end violence against women. She serves on the Board of the Queensland Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Unit and is a Steering Committee Member for the Family Law Pathways Network Gold Coast.
Senior Lecturer Adis Duderija
Dr Adis Duderija is is one of the internationally most recognised scholars in the field of contemporary Islamic Studie,s especially in relation to his work on the theory of progressive Islam, inter-faith dialogue theory, gender issues in Islam and the Islamic intellectual tradition more generally. His most recent co-authored book is Duderija, A., Alak, A., & Hissong, K. (2020). Islam and Gender Major Issues and Debates. Routledge.
Dr Vanessa Ercole
Venessa received her PhD from Griffith University, where she focused on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault and Ancient Greek ethics of ‘care of the self’. She has published in Parrhesia, Nietzsche-Studien, and written entries for the Good Health and Wellbeing chapter of the Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. She is currently the Media Officer for The Fredrich Nietzsche Society and is writing a joint paper on transfiguration and music for Cambridge 2021 Nietzsche Now Series.
Associate Professor Huiyun Feng
Huiyun Feng is a senior lecturer in the School of Government and International Relations, and is researching on gender leadership and foreign policy.
Dr Nilmini Fernando
Nilmini is a Sri Lankan-Australian interdisciplinary feminist scholar with expertise in critical race/critical intersectional praxis, Third World, Postcolonial, Black, and Indigenous feminisms, applied in migration/asylum, domestic and family violence, arts-based decolonial methods. Nilmini consults for organisations in anti-racism and intersectionality. With a background in radio, spoken word and theatre of the oppressed, Nilmini also produces events at the art/academic/activist nexus to bring feminists of colour, intellectual, philosophical, political and literary texts to public audiences.
Dr Patricia Fronek
As a researcher, educator and social worker with 30 years' experience in the field, Patricia is deeply committed to social work values including social justice, human rights, respecting and valuing the worth and self-determination of all people, especially women and children in surrogacy and adoption. She is passionate about social work's value to society and research-informed public policy as opposed to policy informed by ideology, personal opinions or political influence.
Professor Simone Fullagar
Simone is an interdisciplinary sociologist who has published widely on gender equity in sport, mental health, active communities and social well-being. With an interest in social and organisational change her work contributes to thinking differently about inequalities. Simone also has a professional background in community service management for diverse populations.
Dr Connie Cai Ru Gan
Cai Ru (Connie) is a doctoral candidate at Griffith's Centre for Environment and Population Health. She is equally interested in public health research and translating those findings into public health policy. Her thesis focuses on future-proofing hospitals against climate-related disasters by leveraging innovative ways to streamline and accelerate adaptation activities in healthcare settings. Alongside research and work, Connie enjoys boxing, movies and flexes her linguistics muscles by learning her 6th/7th language: Emoji 😉
Dr Catherine Grant
Catherine is a researcher and educator in ethnomusicology and music education, author of the monograph Music Endangerment (OUP, 2014) and co-editor of Sustainable Future for Music Cultures (OUP, 2016). Her work intersects with issues of social justice and human rights, including gender. Catherine was awarded the 2015 Australian Future Justice medal for her research, advocacy and activism on cultural sustainability. She continues to work with communities in Australia, Vanuatu and Cambodia to support efforts to advance cultural justice.
Dr Andrea Haefner
Andrea is a Lecturer at the Griffith Asia Institute. Her research focuses on governing civil society in Southeast Asia and she has a strong interest in transboundary river basins, especially the Mekong River Basin. Besides focusing on impact research and policy relevance, Andrea also worked on several projects on the ground in water resources management and climate change alongside leading various capacity-building projects, including the DFAT-funded Leadership for Gender Inclusion Program for Lao Australian Award Alumni in 2021.
Professor Susan Harris Rimmer
With Professor Sara Davies, Susan is co-convenor of the Griffith Gender Equality Research Network. Susan is author of Gender and Transitional Justice (Routledge 2010), the Research Handbook on Feminist Engagement with International Law (Edward Elgar 2019, with Kate Ogg) and over 40 refereed works on women's rights and international law. She was Australia’s representative to the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2014, and the W20 (gender equity advice to the G20) in Turkey 2014, China 2016 and Germany 2017.
Dr Robyn Holder
Robyn is an Adjunct Research Fellow in Griffith Criminology Institute. Her research and evaluation work considers the interface between people as victims of violence and justice, and the role of rights, including human rights. Robyn brings senior executive experience in public policy and law reform in Australia and the UK, especially on gendered violence, victims’ rights, and governance. Her current work examines third-party roles in domestic and international criminal justice as rights-protecting mechanisms.
Dr Natalya Hughes
Natalya’s practice-led research is concerned with decorative and ornamental traditions and their associations with the feminine, the body and excess. Recent bodies of work investigate the relationship between modernist painters and their anonymous women subjects.
Dr Eloise Hummel
Eloise has a PhD in Sociology and Bachelor of Social Science (Hons) from Macquarie University, Sydney. Since joining The Hopkins Centre in 2017 as a Research Fellow, Eloise has been engaged in research projects broadly examining disability rights, policy and service delivery reforms. Especially utilising street-level perspectives, Eloise is focused on developing understandings on how policy gets translated and implemented through various administrative, organisational and practice tiers, and to critically examine the administrative, practice and equity impacts.
Dr Samantha Jeffries
Broadly, Samantha's research focuses on marginalised statuses (such as gender, Indigeneity, ethnicity, sexuality), offending, victimisation and justice (civil and criminal). Early in her career, her research efforts culminated around domestic violence in LGBTIQ+ relationships, protection order legislation, the sex industry, problem solving courts, sentencing, gender and Indigeneity. More recently, Samantha's emphasis has shifted toward domestic violence, family law, restorative justice, gendered pathways to, experiences of, and pathways from prison, ethnicity and women’s imprisonment in South East Asia and Kenya.
Dr Di Johnson
A lecturer and researcher at the Griffith Business School, Di has a PhD in finance and active research. Her teaching interests cover financial vulnerability, personal and household finance, behavioural economics, active media engagement and interdisciplinary research.
Dr Alexis Anja Kallio
Alexis is a Senior Lecturer of Music and Research at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, Griffith University. Her research investigates the politics of arts education in school, university and community settings, with a particular focus on diversity and equity issues. She has also published on research ethics and qualitative inquiry, exploring the intersections between research practice and artistic process. She has published widely in academic journals and serves on a number of international editorial boards.
Dr Eun-Ji Amy Kim
Eun-Ji Amy (she/her) Kim 's research focuses on the role of critical-trans (disciplinary/local) in forming partnerships for research and policy networks development in the field of education (e.g. global citizenship education, cross-cultural science education). She is part of Crit-Trans Urban Education Collective Coven, comprised of women researchers across Australia, Canada and US.
Dr Jessica Kirk
Jessica is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Governance and Public Policy. Her research focuses on responses to disease outbreaks, crisis policy making, the role of expertise, critical theories of security and the politics of exceptionalism. She is particularly interested in how health and medicine are entwined with ideas of security and risk, how this impacts on state responses to outbreaks both near and far, and the politics of expertise within health emergencies.
Associate Professor Parvinder Kler
Parvinder is an economist with training in political science. He joined Griffith University from the United Nations, where he was an economics affairs officer based in Beirut, Lebanon. He has worked on projects with agencies at state and federal levels in Australia, as well as with an internationally based conglomeration of unions. His primary areas of research include labour economics, gender issues, job and life satisfaction, economic development, economics of education and financial market regulation.
Professor Elena Marchetti
Elena is a Professor of Law in the Griffith Law School and a member of the Griffith Criminology Institute and Law Futures Centre at Griffith University. She is also the Deputy Chair of the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council. Elena completed her PhD in 2005. Since completing her PhD, she has been the recipient of two prestigious Australian Research Council Fellowships. Her book titled Indigenous Culture, Courts and Partner Violence was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019.
Dr Georgia Munro-Cook
Georgia is a research fellow with Griffith Inclusive Futures. Georgia graduated with a PhD in history and gender studies, focusing on sport and the experience of professional women’s basketball players in the WNBA. She is particularly interested in notions of embodiment, professionalisation, and the promotion and elevation of Women's Sport, and how these issues interact with gender, race, class, disability and sexuality in broader society. She also competed in the 2020 Paralympics as a member of the Australian Gliders Wheelchair Basketball team.
Dr Natalie Osborne
Natalie is a lecturer in critical human geography and urban and environmental planning. Informed by feminist and subaltern epistemologies, she is committed to scholarship that engages, collaborates and conspires beyond the university. Natalie’s interests include social, spatial and environmental justice in cities; just transitions; radical spatial politics; more-than-human publics; emotional geographies; public spaces; and public feelings. She co-produces Radio Reversal, a critical theory and politics program broadcast on 4ZZZ 102.1FM, and an organiser with Brisbane Free University.
Dr Emma Palmer
Emma's research interests include international criminal law, international humanitarian law, human rights and social justice, transitional justice, corporations and commercial law, infrastructure governance, criminal law and gender issues. She was awarded her PhD for her thesis 'International Criminal Law in Southeast Asia: beyond the International Criminal Court', from UNSW Law in 2017. She has been a research assistant for two Australian Research Council Discovery Projects within the Faculty of Law at UNSW.
Dr Adele Pavlidis
Adele was awarded an ARC DECRA in 2018 to explore the rise of women's participation in contact sports such as AFL, rugby league and roller derby. She is particularly interested in feminist concepts around affect and transformation and uses these to better understand the role of sport in society as it is related to challenging and perpetuating gender inequality.
Professor Juliet Pietch
Juliet is a leading scholar in the specialist fields of migration politics and political behaviour in Australia and Southeast Asia. She has published more than 60 research publications. Juliet has also played a lead investigator role on six ARC grants—collectively worth more than $1.6 million—that involve the development of research data infrastructure for the study of migration and political behaviours. She has held Visiting Fellowships at Stanford University, Concordia University and the University of Oxford.
Zoe Rathus
Zoe has published and presented widely on women and the law, particularly the Australian family law system and domestic and family violence. After eight years in private practice, Zoe became coordinator of the Women’s Legal Service in 1989 and moved to Griffith in 2005. She is a vocal advocate for legal system reform. Zoe was awarded an Order of Australia in 2011 for her services to women, the law, Indigenous peoples and education.
Dr Susan Ressia
Susan's research focuses on the job search experiences of independent non-English-speaking-background skilled migrants in Australia. Susan’s research interests also include the areas of work-life balance, managing diversity, intersectionality, equality and social justice issues. Susan is co-author of Employment Relations: An Integrated Approach (2nd Edn) and Work in the 21st Century: How do I Log on?. She has also published in Gender, Work and Organization, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, and the Asia-Pacific Journal of Human Resources.
Dr Michelle Ronksley-Pavia
Michelle is a special needs and inclusive education lecturer in the School of Education and Professional Studies. She has extensive experience with inclusive education and diverse learners, including gifted and talented students, twice exceptional learners (gifted students with disability) and students with special education needs. She is an international leading researcher and expert in the field of gifted education and twice exceptionality. Michelle is passionate about women’s experiences of working in academia and higher education.
Professor Leonie Rowan
Leonie conducts research into the ways in which beliefs about gender can be perpetuated or transformed in formal and informal educational contexts. She has led ARC-funded research projects that focus on women's under-representation in science and technology; the links between gender and the experiences of international students in Australian high schools; and the role that teacher education plays in preparing future teachers to work appropriately, transformatively with learners from diverse backgrounds, and different genders.
Associate Professor Popi Sotiriadou
Popi is an Associate Professor of Sport Management, a foundational member of the Sport and Gender Equity @ Griffith research hub, a Senior Fellow with the Higher Education Academy, winner of Excellence in Teaching Awards and a TEQSA-registered expert. She has been invited to consult with the International Olympic Committee, Sports Australia, Sarawak in Malaysia and the Queensland Academy of Sport. Popi is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Sport Policy and Politics and an editorial member for the Journal of Sport Management.
Dr Dhara Shah
Dhara is a Senior Lecturer with research interests in gender issues, women’s career, self-efficacy, cross-cultural adjustment and Indian women. She is working on two research projects; an Australian government-funded social innovation ‘Sisters’ project focusing on empowering disadvantaged women over 50, with research focusing on increasing self-efficacy among disadvantaged women through entrepreneurial learning, career motivations, labour market re-entry, etc. She co-leads a Queensland Government-funded project to understand motivations and challenges of Indian women social entrepreneurs embarking on entrepreneurial journey.
Professor Parlo Singh
Parlo’s research work focuses on issues of educational equity and social justice. Specifically she is interested in research partnerships that assists students from disadvantaged communities gain access to complex forms of knowledge. Issues of educational inequity have inevitably dealt with the dynamics of social class, gender, and cultural identity, and theorisations of policy, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Of particular significance is work that challenges the re-production of social inequity via schooling systems through complex sociological theorising.
Professor Tanya Smith
Tanya is a Professor in the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution and the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. She has recently been identified as a STEM Women Changemaker by the Australian Academy of Science, is a member of the Griffith University Equity Committee, is the HLSS Equity Champion, and will begin an ARC Future Fellowship in 2021. Tanya is particularly interested in the ways that female academic staff experience and influence academic culture, particularly in elite institutions.
Dr Nancy Spencer
Nancy has an extensive work experience with Queensland Government primarily in the social portfolios, disaster management and security policy. She is currently working with the Policy Innovation Hub focusing on policy development and implementation and working with Dr Dhara Shah on improving the self confidence and independence of women aged over 50. Nancy is active in the not-for-profit sector assisting organisations with governance, developing sustainable business models and improving care and clinical governance.
Dr Jiraporn (Nui) Surachartkumtonkun
Jiraporn (Nui) is a lecturer in the Griffith Business School at Griffith University. She earned her PhD in Marketing from The University of New South Wales. Her research interests include multicultural marketing, employee diversity service marketing, and coping and emotion. She has been published in leading international journals including the Journal of Retailing, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Business Research and many more. Jiraporn is a member of the Editorial Board of the Australasian Marketing Journal.
Dr Roberta Thompson
Roberta is a sociocultural anthropologist interested in teenage girls' everyday experience in and out of school, both on and offline. Her research explores the interplay between teenage girls' friendship interactions, gendered discourses, social media and online safety agendas. Roberta's research has implications for esafety policy, school-level online safety and wellbeing approaches, and the development of effective cyberbullying intervention resources for teenage girls. Her research draws on social interaction and framing theories and her methodological approach follows principles of design ethnography.
Dr Carolyn Troup
Carolyn's disciplinary background is organisational psychology and human resource management. Her research focuses on employment conditions and HR practice with specific interest in gender equity and inclusion policy. In 2012 she joined Griffith working on the Gender Equity in Australian Universities study. She's currently a Research Fellow on the ARC project: Intimidation and Voice of Scientists. Other studies she is involved in include examining the impact of work arrangements among university staff during COVID-19, union activity and delegate training.
Dr Kate van Doore
Kate is an international child rights lawyer and an academic at Griffith Law School. Kate is an internationally recognised expert on orphanage trafficking. She currently researches the intersections of child rights, institutionalisation and human trafficking, and has presented international keynotes on these issues. Kate works with governments, NGOs and companies on their approaches and responses to orphanage trafficking and modern slavery.
Dr Tracey West
Tracey is known for her research expertise in financial literacy and gender issues facing retirement savings policy and financial education, as evidenced by 18 published articles. Her research has analysed the gender differences in financial literacy measurement, the nexus of life events and financial literacy for resilience and wealth outcomes, and financial risk taking. Her PhD was on household financial decision-making, and she has numerous publications on household wealth, financial literacy, financial socialisation and financial planning issues.
Dr Indigo Willing
Indigo is a sociologist whose theoretical and empirical work examines issues of social inclusion, diversity and equity as well as pathways of representation for women and minority groups. With a strong focus on community volunteering and engagement, she was also awarded a Medal in the Order of Australia (OAM). Indigo writes about migration, adoption and transnationalism. She also publishes on the sociology of youth and subcultures, gender and violence, lifestyle sports, skateboarding studies and film research.
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.