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I am a sociologist currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR) at the University of Queensland. I hold a PhD in Sociology from the Australian National University (ANU) and a master’s degree in social policy (research) from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). With extensive experience spanning over a decade, one of my specialisations is based on designing and executing qualitative and quantitative research projects across public and private sectors. My expertise lies in evaluating the effectiveness of social policies through data analysis and critical assessment, aiming to inform evidence-based recommendations for improving social programs and interventions. My doctoral thesis used quantitative methods and secondary data to analyse the subjective perceptions of inequality and its effects on today’s society. My research focuses on subjective perceptions of inequality and its societal implications, social classes, social stratification, and social mobility.

Geoff is a leading Australian sociologist with interests in rural and regional sociology, globalisation/localisation and agrifood research.

He attended James Ruse Agricultural High School in Sydney and was School Captain in 1968. He then completed a degree in agricultural economics at Sydney University in 1972. This was followed by a diploma in social science (UNE), Master of Science in Sociology (Wisconisn-Madison) and a PhD (Griffith). In 1992 he became Associate Professor of Sociology and Foundation Director, Centre for Rural Social Research, at Charles Sturt University before moving later that year to Central Queensland University as Foundation Professor of Sociology (1992-2002) and Executive Director, Institute for Sustainable Regional Development (1998-2002). He joined The University of Queensland as Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of Social Science in 2002. He is a Life Member of the Fitzroy Basin Association, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, Life Member of the Australian Sociological Association, and was President of the International Rural Sociology Association (2012-2016). He became Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Queensland in 2014.

His full profile can be seen at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Lawrence_(sociologist)

Suri Li is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research, University of Queensland and the Centre of Excellence for Children & Families over the Life Course. Her current work centres on gender inequality and family dynamic across life course and explores the interplay of gender relations in the public and private spheres.

Prior to her current position, she holds a BSc and MSc in Finance, as well as an MA in Public Policy from the University of Edinburgh, the UK and a PhD in Sociology at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Her DPhil Thesis focus on the relationship between household resources and child wellbeing in Ireland, Australia and the UK using longitudinal data from birth cohort studies.

Professor Kristen Lyons is a public intellectual with over twenty years experience in research, teaching and service that delivers national and international impacts on issues that sit at the intersection of sustainability and development, as well as the future of higher education. Trained as a sociologist, Kristen is comfortable working in transdisciplinary teams to deliver socially just outcomes, including for some of the world's most vulnerable communities. Kristen works regularly in Uganda, Solomon Islands and Australia, and her work is grounded in a rights-based approach. In practice, this means centring the rights and interests of local communities, including Indigenous peoples, in her approach to research design, collaboration, and impacts and outcomes. Kristen is also a Senior Research Fellow with the Oakland Institute.

Joemer’s main research area is on adolescent health epidemiology and program evaluation.

Joemer focuses on pragmatic approaches in epidemiology to identify social determinants and mental health risks in adolescents including young mothers. Apart from applications of modelling techniques on cross-sectional and panel data, he has expertise in conducting evidence synthesis including meta-analytic methodologies.

Joemer also has an extensive experience in monitoring and evaluation of health and social programs. He previously worked as a research fellow and health systems consultant in government agencies and international NGOs focused on adolescent health and reproductive health services at local and national contexts. Now, he is involved with evaluation of programs targeting young people with complex mental health issues and those who are victims of domestic and family violence.

Joemer has strong research interests on contextualizing adolescent reproductive health through mental health risks, and mental health integration in primary care in low resource settings.

Lorraine Mazerolle is an Emeritus Professor at The University of Queensland, School of Social Science and an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow (2010–2015). She received the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in the General Division on Australia Day 2024 “for eminent service to education, to the social sciences as a criminologist and researcher, and to the development of innovative, evidence-based policing reforms.” Professor Mazerolle has published 5 books, 4 edited books, over 180 scientific journal articles and 46 book chapters. Her work has been cited more than 14,000 times. Her research interests are in experimental criminology, policing, drug law enforcement, regulatory crime control, and crime prevention. She has held many academic leadership roles including Co-Chair of the Crime and Justice Group (Campbell Collaboration), Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Experimental Criminology and Chair of the American Society of Criminology’s (ASC) Division of Experimental Criminology. She is an elected Fellow and past president of the Academy of Experimental Criminology (AEC), and an elected fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences Australia and the American Society of Criminology (ASC). Professor Mazerolle is the recipient of the ASC Division of Experimental Criminology Jerry Lee Lifetime Achievement Award (2019), Partners in Research Excellence Award The University of Queensland (2019), Distinguished Achievement Award of the Center for Evidence Based Crime Policy at George Mason University (2019), ASC Sellin-Glueck Award (2018), the ASC Division of Policing Distinguished Scholar Award (2016), the AEC Joan McCord Award (2013), and the ASC Division of International Criminology Freda Adler Distinguished Scholar Award (2010). She has won numerous US and Australian national competitive research grants on topics such as partnership policing, police engagement with high-risk people and disadvantaged communities, community regulation, problem-oriented policing, police technologies, civil remedies, street-level drug enforcement and policing public housing sites.

Lisa McDaid is Director of the Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR) and Professor of Social Sciences and Health at The University of Queensland. Lisa has an international reputation grounded in knowledge exchange and partnership. Her research has made significant contributions to identifying solutions to health inequalities among the most disadvantaged and marginalised in our society. Lisa is experienced in how to engage communities at high risk of poor health and wellbeing in health improvement research and in developing new methods of co-production for intervention development.

Lisa is a Social Scientist and obtained her PhD in Medical Sociology from the University of Glasgow in 2007. She has been Chief-Investigator on research grants c.AU$100M and has authored over 100 publications. Lisa is also an Associate Director of the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, a consortium research centre based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Karolina Mikołajewska-Zając is a Research Fellow in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the UQ Business School. Her research revolves around patterns of societal crises and their influence on entrepreneurship and the dynamics and systemic effects of digital platforms' growth. Karolina's work uses ecological epistemologies, emphasizing relationality, process, and systemic connection.

Karolina obtained her PhD in Management and Organization Studies from Kozminski University in Warsaw, Poland. During her PhD, she held a 2-year visiting position at the University of California at Berkeley, where she conducted fieldwork tracing the organizational trajectory and ecosystemic effects of digital platforms focused on hospitality (Couchsurfing and Airbnb). Her research has been published in Organization Studies, European Journal of Social Theory, Internet Histories, and The Handbook of the Sharing Economy, among others. Karolina is a member of the editorial collective at ephemera. theory & politics in organization and a member of the steering committee at the International Sociological Association's Thematic Group 10 Digital Sociology.

I am a cultural anthropologist with expertise in gender, racism, medical anthropology, and critical global health. I have conducted extensive ethnographic research in Indonesia on health care, gendered violence, education, and racial stigma. The main focus of my research is Papua/West Papua, where my work has tried to document and understand evolving forms of racism and violence, including how people resist and create change. Over the past 15 years I have worked with local Papuan and international research teams on studies of violence, older women's life stories, HIV/AIDS, hospital birth, and health vulnerabilities. My research aims to develop knowledge of the nuances and complexities of conditions and experiences in West Papua, while also working with Papuan scholars and community members to address pressing health and social problems.

I recently completed a study with Els Tieneke Rieke Katmo and Meki Wetipo on how urban Papuans today understand and experience pregnancy and childbirth and how hospital childbirth may be creating more distrust in the health system rather than improving maternal health (2023, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology), published as part of a special issue on 'Reproducing Life in Conditions of Abandonment in Oceania', edited with Sandra Widmer. Another recent multi-sited study looks at vulnerabilities in Indonesia with Professor Lyn Parker (University of Western Australia) and others from the UK and Indonesia. The study used ethnography and surveys to develop a deeper, contextual understanding of who is vulnerable, how and why, and thus shed light on the concept of vulnerability and what it means. Forthcoming publications look at education in Indonesia's frontier economy, older women’s narratives of economic agency and survivance (co-authored with Yohana Baransano), and the challenges faced by newlyweds.

I am expanding my research with older Papuan women on their experiences of the late Dutch and early Indonesian era and their narratives of survivance to include Papuan women from different cultural backgrounds and urban/rural locations. Papuan women's stories and historical experiences are largely missing from public view but are needed to understand their important contributions to society and their roles in creating the future. I am also expanding my research on obstetrics and c-sections to understand the cultures of maternity care in Indonesia, both in terms of local cultural needs and preferences, and in relation to the cultures of medicine and obstetrics that exist in hospitals and birth centres. This will help us to understand how to create respectful maternity care in different cultural contexts, including in Australia. Related to this, I recently completed an action research project funded by the Australia Indonesia Institute (with Els Katmo) on co-designing cultural approaches to sexual and reproductive health, including HIV prevention, in West Papua.

Some recent publications that illustrate key themes of my research:

Jenny Munro, Els Tieneke Rieke Katmo & Meki Wetipo (2022) Hospital Births and Frontier Obstetrics in Urban West Papua, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 23:4-5, 388-406, DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2022.211512

Jenny Munro & Yohana Baransano (2023), From saving to survivance: Rethinking Indigenous Papuan women's vulnerabilities in Jayapura, Indonesia. Asia Pacific Viewpoint https://doi.org/10.1111/apv.12367

Jenny Munro, Lyn Parker, and Yohana Baransano. "There's Money but No Work": Diploma Disruptions in Urban Papua. The Contemporary Pacific 33, no. 2 (2021): 364-384.

Jenny Munro (2020) Global HIV Interventions and Technocratic Racism in a West Papuan NGO, Medical Anthropology, 39:8, 704-719, DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2020.1739036

Jenny Munro. (2020), ‘Saving our people’: health workers, medical citizenship, and vernacular sovereignties in West Papua. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 26: 633-651. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13318

I am an experienced PhD supervisor in medical anthropology and gender studies. I am particularly interested in working with candidates who wish to study gender, health, or racism in (or in relation to) West Papua using anthropological, ethnographic and qualitative approaches. Research projects I have supervised include:

• Intersectionality in Australian domestic violence services
• Changing masculinities in Uzbekistan
• Gender and education in Enga province, Papua New Guinea
• Australian spiritual healing
• Household meat practices in Indonesia and Australia
• Women’s empowerment and energy in South Africa
• Health of Pacific seasonal workers in Queensland Australia
• Carers’ experiences with medicinal cannabis
• Apitherapy in Australia

I teach undergraduate and postgraduate courses on medical anthropology (ANTH2250/7250) and Pacific anthropology (ANTH2020). I also supervise Honours students and co-coordinate HHSS6002 (Honours coursework).

Dr Giselle Newton (she/her) is a digital health sociologist at the Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies and has worked at UQ since 2023. Giselle is a Research Fellow on the Australian Ad Observatory in the Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. Giselle's research program is focused on individuals' experiences with digital, reproductive and genetic technologies, considering how these technologies shape personal and family life. Giselle is interested in methodological and ethical considerations, and participatory, creative and data donation methods in social research. She has experience working in interdisciplinary teams developing and applying digital tools, infrastructure and observatories to better understand individuals (often unobservable and ephemeral) digital social worlds.

Giselle holds an appointment as Adjunct Associate Lecturer at the Centre for Social Research in Health at UNSW, Sydney. Giselle is a co-convenor of the Australian Sociological Association Thematic Group on Families and Relationships. Giselle was awarded the Early Career International Visiting Fellowship, University of Sheffield for 2024-25.

Research

Current projects:

• Targeted digital advertising in fertility, reproduction and parenting
• Understanding stakeholders’ perspectives on public inquiries in sexual and reproductive health
• DNA datascapes: how individuals seek information about family via direct-to-consumer DNA testing

Past projects:

• How alcohol and gambling companies target people most at risk with marketing for addictive products on social media, using the Australian Mobile Ad Toolkit (contract research project commissioned by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education Limited, with A/Prof Nic Carah and Lauren Hayden)
• On target: Understanding advertising in the fertility sector with data from the Australian Ad Observatory, a winter research collaboration (with Romy Wilson Gray and Maria Proctor).
• Everyday belongings: how Australian donor-conceived adults’ use digital technologies to bond, sleuth, educate and strategise. Giselle's PhD study won Dean’s Award for Outstanding PhD Theses in 2022.
• Understanding care endings: Sociological and educational approaches to support pathways out of caring

Research supervision

Current students:

• Lauren Hayden (PhD candidate, UQ) - Digital advertising and cultures of alcohol consumption on social media platforms (with A/Prof Nicholas Carah, Prof Daniel Angus)
• Simone Sanders (Master of Genetic Counselling student, UTS) - Representations of breast cancer predisposition testing on TikTok: a qualitative content analysis
• Lina Choi (Master of Genetic Counselling student, UTS) - Direct-to-consumer DNA testing content online
• Phoebe Price-Barker (Honours, Criminology, UQ) - Assessing cyber vulnerabilities in direct-to-consumer genetic testing platforms

Past students:

• Cushla McKinney (Master of Genetic Counselling student, UTS) - The impact of direct-to-consumer DNA testing on genetic counselling practice (with Dr Lisa Dive, A/Prof Aideen McInerny-Leo, Dr Vaishnavi Nathan).
• Diya Dilip Porwal (Master of Genetic Counselling student, UTS) - Experiences of carrier screening and genetic testing in gamete donors (with Julia Mansour and Dr Lisa Dive).

Areas of supervision: Giselle welcomes research proposals focused on social research in digital identities and cultures; family relationships and practices; DNA and genetic testing/screening; reproductive health and donation.

Teaching

Giselle has coordinated and lectured across undergraduate and postgraduate programs in courses in humanities, social sciences and health. She was course coordinator for COMU2030 Communication Research Methods in 2023, lecturer in HHSS6000 HASS Honours Research Design in 2024 and HHSS6040 Honours Research Design in Arts and Culture in 2025.

From the politics of climate change to defending democracy, Professor Daniel Nyberg is seeking to understand how corporations, governments, and citizens negotiate different priorities when facing key challenges of our time.

This qualitative researcher takes an interdisciplinary approach to his work across two main areas:

1. climate change, where he interrogates the links between climate change and corporate capitalism, and
2. defending democracy, where he seeks to untangle the relationships between industry and government.

“These are some of the biggest threats facing humankind,” he affirms.

“How could you not be interested?”

Climate Change

Professor Nyberg’s interest in climate change came from a growing sense of urgency. As public interest in green products grew, corporations were beginning to address climate change internally, through the design and delivery of green products and services. At the same time, the climate emergency led to attempts to contain or regulate polluting industries, for example through carbon offsets and other measures.

“It’s important to understand what corporations are doing in order to mitigate and/or minimise the effects of climate change,” Professor Nyberg explains.

“We also need to have knowledge about what they’re doing so we can regulate their activities.”

Working alongside Professor Christopher Wright from the University of Sydney's Business School, and Dr Vanessa Bowden from the University of Newcastle's School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences, this ground-breaking research has been published in a number of leading international journals. The three colleagues collaborated on the book, Organising Responses to Climate Change: The Politics of Mitigation, Adaptation and Suffering (2022, Cambridge University Press), building on the success of Professor Nyberg and Professor Wright's book, Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations: Processes of Creative Self-Destruction (2015, Cambridge University Press), which attracted wide attention across both the social and natural sciences.

Defending Democracy

Building on this work, Professor Nyberg has developed a strong interest in corporate political activity, both in how public policy is interpreted and implemented in practice, as well as in how corporations seek to influence public policy. This shift from the narrow focus on corporate outcomes to the broader understanding of democratic processes, is particularly relevant in the fraught debates around climate policy.

“I’m currently exploring how corporations influence democracy,” he states.

“The clearest example is the Labor Government’s super profit tax proposal of 2010, which the mining industry vehemently opposed. Even though it spent $22 million doing so, calculations by the Australian Financial Review suggest it saved $10 billion by agreeing to a truce with then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard. So, you can see it’s often much easier and cheaper for corporations to deal with public policies than it is for them to deal with their processes.”

Dr Martin O’Flahertyis a research fellow in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course located in the Institute for Social Science Research. Martin has made important contributions to the evaluation of nationally significant social policy, often working with the Department of Social Services. Notable highlights include designing the impact evaluation for the $90 million Try, Test, and Learn Fund and leading the evaluation of the Building Capacity in Australia’s Parents trial and the National Community Awareness Raising initiative. He is the quantitative lead for recently announced Community Refugee Integration and Sponsorship Pilot, funded by the Department of Home Affairs, which is investigating the feasibility of alternative settlement pathways for unlinked humanitarian migrants.

Martin’s broader research centres on the intersection of family, health, and disadvantage over the life course, using advanced quantitative methods to unlock causal and longitudinal perspectives on important social problems. Recent work has investigated patterns and determinants of children’s and adolescents’ time-use, including for adolescents with disability and LGBTQ adolescents. He has also led research using state-of-the-art machine learning methodology to study heterogeneous effects of teenage motherhood on later life mental health. Martin’s current research is primarily focussed on understanding the nature, causes of, and solutions to, poverty and financial insecurity among children with disabilities and their families. His work has appeared in leading international journals including Demography, Child Development, and The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health among others.

Rebecca Olson is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Queensland, cutting-edge translational qualitative researcher, mentor and award-winning educator with expertise in the sociologies of health and emotions. As Director of SocioHealthLab, she leads an interdisciplinary collective of researchers, health professional educators and practitioners interested in doing health and healthcare differently: more socially aware, more relational, more inclusive and more just. As Director of Teaching and Learning in the School of Social Science, she prioritises collaborative, reflexive, creative and emotions-centred practices in higher education. With over 75 scholarly publications – as well as news media and creative video productions – Rebecca is a prolific contributor to public debate. With research interests spanning medicinal cannabis and health professions education to climate anxiety, Olson is internationally renowned for bringing sociological insight to complex challenges related to emotions, wellbeing, healthcare and caregiving.

Cameron is an Australian Research Council Industry Fellow in partnership with Micah Projects.

His work examines multiple forms of exclusion and social harms. Cameron's research focuses on the nature and experience of poverty, homelessness, and domestic and family violence. He is interested in understanding what societies do to respond to these problems, and what societies ought to do differently to address them. In collaboration with researchers and partners from not-for-profit organisations, Cameron’s program of research seeks to identify how citizens experiencing exclusion and practitioners working with them can work with governments to bring about systematic societal change.

In his first book, The Homeless Person in Contemporary Society, Cameron sought to highlight how the representation of people who are homeless as distinct informs a policy and practice agenda that he characterised as a poverty of ambition. Cameron's second book with Andrew Clarke and Francisco (Paco) Perales, Charity and Poverty in Advanced Welfare States, takes on the question how can we be just by soothing the consequences of poverty without addressing the causes of poverty.

Cameron's most recent book published by Polity Press, Homelessness, demonstrates that homelessness is a punishing, predictable, yet solvable social problem.https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=9781509554492

Dr Stefanie Plage is a Research Fellow with the Life Course Centre at the School of Social Science at UQ. Her expertise is in qualitative research methods, including longitudinal and visual methods. Her research interests span the sociology of emotions, disadvantage and health and illness. Stefanie has taught introductory and advanced courses in sociology and medical sociology, research design and qualitative inquiry, including the use of software for qualitative research (i.e. NVivo). Her work is multi-disciplinary. She completed her PhD at the Centre for Social Research in Health at The University of New South Wales. In her study she employed a mix of longitudinal qualitative interviews and visual elicitation methods to explore the lived experience of people with cancer. Currently, her research seeks to understand and improve the interactions of families experiencing social disadvantage with the social and health care systems.

I am an Associate Professor of urban planning. Since joining the University of Queensland in 2015, my research has focused on the built environment triad: urban design, transport, and housing - in both the Global North and South. I approach my work from a feminist perspective, considering the role of gender in the city.

My personal and academic journey has been international in nature. I am a native of Albania. Over the years I have held guest teaching and/or research positions in Austria (UWien), Canada (UBC), Chile (PUC), Italy (IUAV), the Netherlands (UvA), Oman (GUTech), and Vietnam (UTC), and I have provided consultancy services to various United Nations agencies including the UNDP, UNESCAP, and UN Habitat. I speak Italian, Spanish, and French in addition to English and Albanian.

My latest books are Trophy Cities: A Feminist Perspective on New Capitals (Edward Elgar, 2021) and Alternative Planning History and Theory (Routledge, 2023). For three years in a row (2022-2024), I have been included in the 'Stanford/Elsevier World’s Top 2% Researchers' list, and have ranked among the top-ten 'urban and regional planning' researchers in Australia. Alongside my academic research, I also publish broadly in non-academic outlets and regularly give interviews on national and international media. My articles in The Conversation have reached nearly half a million readers. Prior to joining academia, I worked in urban design and planning in California.

My research has been funded by domestic and international granting bodies, including the Australian Research Council. Overall, I have attracted $700,000 in external funding and $100,000 in internal funding. For a full list of my publications, click the 'Works' tab, which displays results live from UQ eSpace, or visit my external profiles listed on the left panel.

Qualifications

• Postdoctoral Residency, Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft, the Netherlands. 2012-2014.
• PhD in Urban Planning, Polytechnic University of Tirana, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tirana, Albania. 2007-2010.
• Visiting PhD student, University of California at Los Angeles, Luskin School of Public Affairs, Los Angeles, Ca, USA. 2009.
• Master in Urban Planning, University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning, Cincinnati, Oh, USA. Full scholarship award. 2003-2005.
• Visiting Master student, Catholic University of Leuven, Faculty of Architecture (St Lucas), Brussels, Belgium. Recipient of US government FIPSE grant. 2004.
• Professional Degree in Architecture, Polytechnic University of Tirana, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tirana, Albania. 1998-2003.

Sonia Roitman is an urban sociologist and planner by training. Her contributions to the field of development planning and urban sociology include influential research on urban inequalities and how they manifest in cities. Her research interests include housing and poverty alleviation policies; the role of grassroots organisations in urban planning; disaster planning and informal practices; and, gated communities, segregation and planning instruments in Global South cities. Her main research locations are Indonesia, Samoa, Uganda, Argentina and Australia. Her most recent book is: Roitman, S. and Rukmana, D. (Eds), 2023, Routledge Handbook of Urban Indonesia, Routledge, New York and London.

Teaching responsibilities

PLAN1101 Teamwork and negotiation for planners (Course coordinator and lecturer - 2021 and 2022)

PLAN3005/7121 Community planning and participation (Course coordinator and lecturer - 2019 to date)

PLAN3200/7200 Understanding development complexities: Indonesia fieldtrip course (Course coordinator and lecturer - 2015 to date)

PLAN4001/7120 Planning theory (Guest lecturer 2014-2019)

PLAN4130/7130 Planning practicum (Course coordinator - Summer 2018)

PLAN7010 Planning project (Course coordinator and lecturer - 2015-2016)

PLAN7612 Global South Cities (Course coordinator and lecturer - 2014 to date)

PLAN7614 Urban management and governance (Guest lecturer 2013-2016)

PLAN7638 Assessment of development projects (Course coordinator and lecturer 2013-2015 and lecturer 2016)

SOSC7140 Development effectiveness (Lecturer 2017)

ENVM2100/7100 Sustainable Development (Guest lecturer 2013)

GEOS3102 Global change: Problems and prospects (Guest lecturer 2022-2023)

Service and Engagement

UQ Academic Board (2025-to date)

Planning Program Convenor Bachelor of Regional and Town Planning and Master of Urban and Regional Planning (2023- 2024)

Planning Program Lead, UQ (2019-2023)

Student Advisor Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning (BRTP) and Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP), UQ (Jan 2019- Dec 2020)

Planning Institute of Australia UQ Representative (since 2019)

Full Member of Planning Institute of Australia

Board Member RC21 Committee (Research Committee of the Sociology of Urban and Regional Development) International Sociological Association (2014-2023)

Scientific Committee Member of Prospectiva Journal (Revista Prospectiva, Universidad del Valle, Colombia) (since 2015)

Scientific Committee Member of Bitácora Urbano-Territorial Journal (Revista Bitácora Urbano-Territorial, Universidad Nacional de Colombia (since 2012)

Editorial Member of Journal of City and Regional Development (Jurnal Penbangunan Wilayah & Kota, Universitas Diponegoro, Indonesia) (since 2018)

Associate Professor Marnee Shay is a Principal Research Fellow and Deputy Head of School in the School of Education at the University of Queensland. She is an Aboriginal woman whose maternal family is from the Ngen'giwumirri language group (Daly River, Northern Territory), born in Brisbane, with strong connections to Indigenous communities in South East Queensland. Dr Shay is an experienced and qualified secondary teacher.

A/Prof Shay has an extensive externally funded research program that spans the fields of Indigenous education, policy studies, flexi schooling, and youth studies. She has published in many journals, books and scholarly media outlets. A/Prof Shay advocates for strengths approaches in Indigenous education and Indigenous-based evidence to inform policy futures. She is the lead editor of a critical text in the field of Indigenous education, “Indigenous education in Australia Learning and Teaching for Deadly Futures”, published by Routledge in 2021 (with Prof Oliver). The book won a national award for ‘The Tertiary/VET Teaching and Learning Resource (wholly Australian) category at the Education Publishing Awards Australia.

A/Prof Shay’s research has substantially impacted policy and practice in her field. She has contributed to numerous policy submissions, non-traditional research outputs (such as podcasts) and school reviews. She serves on multiple Government and school boards and committees, including the Queensland Department of Education Ministerial Advisory Committee for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education. Dr Shay’s research contributions to education were recognised in 2020 through a National Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL) award, a Queensland branch ACEL Excellence in Educational Leadership Award, and the 2021 UQ Foundation for Research Excellence Award.

Dr Lynda Shevellar joined The University of Queensland in 2009. Based in the School of Social Science, Lynda won an early career award for teaching excellence in 2011, a University of Queensland Award for Teaching Excellence in 2019 and an Australian Award for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2019). She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, the Principal Practitioner - Participation and Engagement (Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation), and is currently one of the Deputy Associate Deans (Academic) for the HASS Faculty. Lynda has previously held roles in government and the community sector and is influenced by over thirty years of experience in community development, the disability sector, mental health, education, and psychology.

Lynda's research explores three closely aligned agendas: understanding the experience of people who live with heightened vulnerability; developing the awareness, agency and capacity of communities to respond to social disadvantage and inequality; and aligning community development theory and education to inform practice in working alongside people who live with heightened vulnerability. Lynda has a particular interest in the development of inclusive learning communities, through creative teaching practices, participative research strategies, and engaged citizenship.

Lynda coordinates the courses SOSC2288: Community Development - Local and International Practice; and SOCY1070: Inequality, Society and the Self.