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Susan Nunan is a Clinical Academic and Course Coordinator for the Master of Nursing Studies (Pre-Registration) Program in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work (NMSW), and joined the School in 2010. Susan is currently the Course Coordinator for NURS7124 Clinical Practice 1 and NURS7125 Older Adults' Health (Semester One) and NURS7130 Professional Practice and NURS7131 Clinical Practice 4 (Semester Two).

Susan has extensive clinical nursing experience in General Medical, Coronary Care and Surgical Units in major hospitals in Brisbane and Sydney, as well as in QLD and NSW rural hospitals where she has also facilitated undergraduate nursing students. In addition, her clinical experience includes; Community Nursing, Gerontological Nursing and Dementia Care in both city and rural settings in QLD and NSW. Susan is a Registered Nurse Division 1 with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, and is a member of the Australian College of Nursing and the Australian Association of Gerontology. Susan has a PhD in Nursing, a Masters of Health Professional Education (Nursing major), a Graduate Certificate in Clinical Practice (Wound Management), a Bachelor of Arts, Research Master of Arts, and has undertaken post-graduate course studies in Mental Health topics.

Susan’s current research interests include falls risk assessment and management, and she has recently completed her PhD within the UQ, School of NMSW, with thesis entitled:Evaluating the validity, reliability and feasibility of a falls risk assessment tool recommended for use in Australian residential aged care facilities. A mixed methods study.

Other areas of research interest for Susan are in Healthy Ageing, Dementia Care and Older Adults' Health.

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. Eric O. Ansah is a postdoctoral research fellow at the W.H. Bryan Mining Geology Research Centre, Sustainable Minerals Institute at the University of Queensland. He is currently researching sustainable solution that addresses both improved metal extraction and the potential to improve mine closure outcomes. Eric has expertise in Geochemistry and Hydrometallurgy with proven track record in developing innovative heap leaching technology for sustainable metal extraction and mine waste reclamation as part of the BHP’s Think & Act Differently (TAD) Essential Minerals Cohort. The protonated brine lixiviant technology was developed as part of his PhD studies into coupled chalcopyrite dissolution with reprecipitation during copper heap leaching at the University of Melbourne.He has worked in metallurgical and geochemical research, plant operations, translation of research to industrial start-up and technology development. Some of his projects and studies involved copper, gold, silver, cobalt, uranium, and REE.

Professor Kate O'Brien applies modelling and data analysis to explore sustainability challenges in engineered, ecological and human systems. Professor O'Brien works with a diverse network of local and international collaborators, from academia, government and industry, to tackle important questions such as: In restoring valuable coastal habitat, what is the minimum patch size required for success, and why? How much oil can individual fossil fuel producers extract without compromising global climate targets? Why is gender equality in the workplace so hard to achieve? She uses modelling as a tool to connect ideas across traditional disciplinary boundaries to promote innovation and tackle complex, open-ended problems. Professor O'Brien is the former Director of Teaching and Learning in the UQ School of Chemical Engineering. She has won numerous awards for teaching students critical thinking and other transferrable skills needed to lead the shift from the current "take-make-waste" paradigm to genuine sustainability. She teaches new academics to take a practical, student-centred approach to teaching called "Ruthless Compassion", and she is passionate about finding creative solutions to work-family conflict.

Doctor Jake O’Brien is Senior Research Fellow and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences (QAEHS). His main field of interest is in wastewater-based epidemiology, but he also has interest in developing analytical methods for chemicals of emerging concern within biological and environmental samples. Doctor O'Brien is a strong advocate for collaborative research having co-authored with more than 300 collaborators worldwide on over 160 publications. Jake is strongly supportive of early career researcher development and is currently the chair of the EMCR@UQ Committee. He is also a Chief Investigator of the National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program since its establishment in 2016.

Dr Kieran O'Brien is a Siemens Healthcare Adjunct Research Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Imaging. He completed his Bachelor of Biomedical Engineering (Honours, 2005) and PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Auckland in 2009. After being awarded his PhD Kieran worked in Postdoctoral positions at the University of Auckland and the University of Geneva Centre d'Imagerie BioMédicale before joining Siemens as a Senior Scientist in 2013.

His research interests are include improving RF pulses at high field (≥3T) to overcome imaging inhomogeneity and B1 limitations for Neuro, MSK and Cardiac applications; bi-exponential diffusion imaging; and, phase imaging for quantitative susceptibility mapping and measuring motion.

Chris O'Brien is a research fellow at QAAFI leading the avocado tissue culture, gene editing and cryopreservation program. He is a global expert in optimising tissue culture and in vitro technologies for recalcitrant crops. His pioneering work on propagation and cryopreservation of avocado has contributed to global licensees for technology uptake. Chris is passionate to deliver world-first technology platforms for horticultural crop improvement. This innovative tech-development will address critical challenges of traditional breeding, enabling rapid development of future-smart cultivars.

Liam O’Brien is a tumor immunologist whose primary focus is the development of new messenger (m)RNA-based immunotherapies applicable to various cancer types. The goal of this work is to develop a new therapy which increases the frequency and length of patient remissions, occurring within Associate Professor Seth Cheetham's laboratory at the Australian Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN).

Liam has expertise utilizing various preclinical models, multi-color flow cytometry for the functional characterization of tumor-infiltrating immune cells, and has developed in vivo systems to assess immunotherapy efficacy along with T cell exhaustion, proliferation, and killing capacity. He has hands-on experience with development of next-generation humanized NSG models and a wide breadth of in vitro immunological assays.

Lisa specializes in British Literature of the eighteenth-century. She trained at Melbourne and Brown universities and has held fellowships at various international English departments including Johns Hopkins University and the Free University Berlin.

Her research interests include the history of the novel, marriage plots, sentimental fiction, gothic fiction, theories of enlightenment and secularization and early global literatures.

Lisa has published on topics including the English marriage plot, libertinism, popular anthropology, travel narrative, settler fiction and courtesan memoirs. Her Australian Research Council-funded Discovery Projects include 'Secularisation and British Literature, 1600-1800' and 'The Cultural Impact of Irregular Marriage in the Age of British Colonialism'.

Her most recent book, The Origins of the English Marriage Plot: Literature, Politics and Religion in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge UP, 2019), offers a new account of why and how marriage became central to the English novel.

She is currently Associate Professor of English Literature in the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University. Her most recent work is on the history and theory of the novel and its relation to early global literatures.

Chris O’Donnell obtained his PhD from the University of Sydney. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Productivity Analysis, an Associate Editor of Empirical Economics, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society. His current research is focused on economic and statistical methods for measuring and explaining productivity and efficiency change. He has authored or co-authored three books on this topic. His work has been published in leading economics and econometrics journals, including the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the Journal of Econometrics, the Journal of Applied Econometrics, Econometric Reviews and the European Journal of Operational Research. He has provided in-house training and/or been a consultant for organisations including the World Bank, the Asian Productivity Organisation, the International Rice Research Institute, the Australian Energy Regulator, the New South Wales Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, and the Australian Independent Hospital Pricing Authority.

I am a social and developmental psychologist specialising in how social environments shape people’s development. My research focuses on family, peer, school, and community influences on mental health, educational aspirations, and social attitudes.

My work applies advanced statistical methods, including latent class analysis, longitudinal modeling, and moderation-mediation frameworks. I collaborate with schools, clinics, and policymakers to ensure my research has practical applications for improving life outcomes and fostering inclusive social environments.

Through interdisciplinary projects, I aim to bridge psychological research and real-world practice, contributing to healthier, more equitable societies.

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.

Neurologist with special interest in electrodiagnosis and neuromuscular disease. Research interests include neuroimmunology, point-of-care ultrasound and the neuropsychiatric interface.

Ass. Prof. Jacinta O’Hagan is an Associate Professor in International Relations in the School of Political Science and International Studies. A former diplomat with the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, Jacinta O’Hagan has held prior appointments at the Australian National University and held visiting fellowships and affiliations at the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and the European University Institute.

Her principal areas of teaching are international history, humanitarianism and culture in world politics. Her research and publications have focused on the role of culture and civilizational in world politics and the politics of humanitarianism, including the role of non-state actors in humanitarianism, and humanitarian diplomacy. She has worked on collaborative projects on the relationship between digital media and political violence and the globalization of international society. Her most recent research and publications have focused on the international humanitarian system, and civilizational politics in international society.