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Dr Renato Costa joined the T. C. Beirne School of Law as an LLM student in 2018. Before undertaking his studies at the University of Queensland, he practised as a lawyer in one of Brazil's most prominent law firms. Renato specialises in constitutional and comparative law.

Renato graduated with an LLB from the Faculty of Law at the Catholic University of Pernambuco, in Brazil. He holds a PhD and an LLM from T.C. Beirne School of Law at the University of Queensland. Renato is the Associate Editor of the University of Queensland Law Journal - UQLJ. He teaches Public and Constitutional Law and has been a guest lecturer in courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Renato's main research area is public law, including constitutional, administrative, and comparative law. His research focus is constitutional theory and specific aspects of the Australian constitutional system, including but not limited to the rule of law, federalism, constitutional history, religious freedom and human rights, responsible government, political and legal theology, and jurisprudence.

Dr Nathalia Costa is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Queensland's cLinical TRials cApability (ULTRA), located within the Centre for Clinical Research in Herston. Her career goal is to enhance the evidence base from clinical trials and deepen the understanding of healthcare issues through qualitative and mixed methods, with a focus on theoretically grounded, critical, reflexive and collaborative approaches. She is passionate about bringing different types of knowledge and stakeholders together to generate perspectives that create change and make research, practice and education more inclusive and nuanced. She advocates for pluralist inquiries and believes research should go beyond the dualism “quantitative/qualitative” to achieve the intersubjective understandings needed for impactful collective action. Her methodological expertise includes:

• Systematic, scoping and rapid reviews
• A range of qualitative methods and methodologies including but not limited to interviews, photo-elicitation, ethnography, Delphi studies, surveys, focus groups, document and policy analysis, thematic analysis, content analysis, and discourse analysis
• Embedding qualitative research in feasibility trials to inform large-scale clinical trials
• Conducting qualitative research to inform the development of implementation strategies
• Use of systems-thinking frameworks to identify opportunities for interdisciplinary and intersectoral action to target health problems
• Applying social theory to deepen understanding of healthcare and health more broadly
• Participatory and collaborative research with key stakeholders (e.g., patients, clinicians, academics, policymakers)

Her publications (55+) span a diverse range of themes, including musculoskeletal conditions, pain, policy, sociology and culturally responsive care. She has also taught across a range of disciplines, including research methods, musculoskeletal physiotherapy, sociology applied to health, fundamentals of physiotherapy, fundamentals of health care, health policy, health economics and health systems finance.

Her research focuses on aspects of low back pain - from exploring ways to navigate uncertainty in low back pain care to identifying avenues to improve it within the Australian healthcare system. She is currently investigating how to optimise recruitment within the FORENSIC trial, which aims to evaluate if lumbar fusion surgery is more beneficial than continuing with best conservative care for patients with persistent severe low back pain who have already undergone non-surgical treatment.

Alongside collaborators, Nathalia has garnered grants (AUD$7.5M) and awards, including an international award for one of her PhD studies, awarded by the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine – the 2021 ISSLS Prize for Lumbar Spine Research (Clinical Science).

Prior to her current appointment, she was a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (UQ - 2021), a Post-doctoral Research Associate at the Sydney School of Public Health (The University of Sydney, 2021-2022), and a Lecturer in Physiotherapy at the Sydney School of Health Sciences (The University of Sydney, 2023). Nathalia serves as an Associate Editor for Qualitative Health Research and the Journal of Humanities in Rehabilitation.

Claire is an international expert in mine water and environmental management who has applied her academic and technical knowledge to influence the mining industry’s environmental performance. She has held several positions in research and consulting, and worked with mining companies in Australia, Africa, Chile and Canada to address issues related to water and sustainable development, documenting and implementing best practices. She gained extensive experience in the mining sector at Anglo American from 2011 to 2018, where she provided technical expertise on all topics related to environmental and water management, in Australia and Canada. She has led new approaches to improve planning for mine closure, including a review of closure plans for De Beers operations in Canada.

In her current role, she seeks to promote environmental excellence throughout the mining cycle, based on capacity building and targeted research programs on water and environmental management, integrated closure planning and beneficial post mining land uses. Claire is part of the newly formed Leading for High Reliability Centre at the University of Queensland, a collaboration between the Sustainable Minerals Institute, the School of Psychology and the Andrew N. Liveris Academy for Innovation and Leadership.

Joost Coté has taught Indonesian, Southeast Asian and Australian History and postgraduate Heritage Studies. His research centres on early twentieth century colonial Indonesia, focussing on discourses of colonial modernity and Indonesian cultural nationalism. He is recognised internationally for his English translations of the writing of Indonesian pioneer feminist, Raden Ajeng Kartini. He has been principal and associate supervisor and examiner of numerous doctoral dissertations. In 2002-2003 he was Regional Director of the Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies (ACICIS) at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta and is a regular visitor to various universities in Indonesia.

Rich is an Honorary Research Fellow with UQ School of the Environment and the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science who focuses on how human food production systems affect our planet. His main research interests lie in the field of aquaculture – the farming of fish, seaweeds and aquatic invertebrates – and particularly how this rapidly growing food sector can evolve to sustainably provide a critical source of food and nutrition to a human population growing in number and affluence under global change.

Through data synthesis, spatial analysis, and ecological modelling, Rich’s research aims to understand the trajectory of aquaculture growth through three main approaches. The first focuses on the growth potential of aquaculture in response to demand given its need for space and inputs (e.g., feed). The second is understanding the environmental and social impacts of aquaculture’s current and projected growth. And the third is to understand how this picture changes amid a backdrop of meteorological and geopolitical shock events and sustained pressures of climate change.

He is currently developing decision-making tools for project partners in the aquaculture feed industry to minimise their environmental footprint at both global and local scales.

Dr. Sophie Coulon is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Australian Research Council Training Centre for Behavioural Insights for Technology Adoption (BITA) at the Queensland University of Technology and an Adjunct Associate Fellow at The University of Queensland. Her research interests span ageism, retirement transitions and understanding the challenges and opportunities that an ageing workforce presents.

Professor Elizabeth (Lizzie) Coulson did her undergraduate Honours degree at the University of Melbourne, majoring in Genetics and Biochemistry. Her PhD (1997) in the Department of Pathology, University of Melbourne, with Professor Colin Masters, was on the normal function of the amyloid precursor protein of Alzheimer’s disease. Following a year at the ZMBH, University of Heidelberg, Germany, she pursued postdoctoral work studying neuronal cell death in neurodegeneration and development at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute with Professor Perry Bartlett before being recruited in 2003 to the University of Queensland as a founding member of the Queensland Brain Institute. She was appointed Professor in 2015, joining the School of Biomedical Sciences and becoming Deputy Head of School in 2016/7 and 2019 and Head of School in 2020. She maintains a 20% Queensland Brain Institutes appointment and is a member of the Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research.

Her Lab webpage is: Coulson Lab - Neurotrophin - School of Biomedical Sciences ...

Beverly Coulter is a Teaching Focused academic in the School of Chemical Engineering. Bev teaches in a range of fundamental chemical engineering courses, specialising on the compulsory, project-centred courses. Bev’s teaching research focusses on the integration of professional skill development in core chemical engineering courses and industry placements, with a particular focus on communication, teamwork, and critical thinking. Bev completed a BE (Hons) Chemical Engineering at UQ and Master of Business Administration at the London Business School. Bev has over 12 years of industry experience in the oil refining, minerals processing, finance, and consulting engineering sectors.

Bev serves as the Director, External Engagment in the School of Chemical Engineering and promotes strong linkages between the School and its key external stakeholders including industry partners, alumni, and other education providers, both domestic and international.

I completed my MBBS and PhD at UQ in 2015. The topic of my PhD was "The Anaphylatoxin Receptors in Neural Progenitor Cell Physiology". In this thesis we examined the function of the anaphylatoxin receptors, C3aR and C5aR1, in a novel location - the neural progenitor cells of the developing brain.

I am currently working as a medical officer at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. I continue to have close links with my previous lab and would be happy to hear from potential students interested in projects in neuroinflammation or developmental neurobiology.

Dr. Sarah Coundouris was awarded her PhD in May 2022. Her work appears in top tier journals that include Psychological Bulletin, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, Computers in Human Behavior, and British Journal of Clinical Psychology. Her early work focused primarily on the cognitive changes associated with Parkinson’s disease, with her more recent research focusing on cognition in the context of normal adult ageing. Sarah is particularly interested in social cognition, which broadly refers to our capacity to perceive and interpret social information, and prospection, which is the capacity to envisage, think about, and prepare for the future. Sarah is currently supervising several Honours and postgraduate students.

Sarah is currently employed as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on an ARC funded Discovery Project led by Professor Julie Henry. A key focus of this project is to establish when, why and how real-life prospective memory function breaks down at different stages of the adult lifespan and in different everyday contexts - and what strategies most effectively prevent this from occurring.

I am a former lecturer in psychology at UQ. I am connected to the UQ School of Psychology as an Honorary Fellow / Lecturer.

My current research is primarily focused on the negative impact of social media on human behaviour and mental health.

More specifically, I am interested in how the content that we are exposed to, and the interactions we have on social media, may impact our empathy, overall emotional state, and our social media response behaviour.

I use several methods to research and measure emotional and empathic responses, including eye-tracking. Eye-tracking reveals the gaze patterns people use when looking at faces and interpreting facial expressions. This adds to our understanding of how the quality of face to face social interaction differs between individuals.

Unfortunately, I am not currently taking on Honours level, or PhD students.

Dr Gary Cowin is the Facility Fellow for the Queensland Node of the National Imaging Facility (NIF) as part of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme (NCRIS), based at the Centre for Advanced Imaging, The University of Queensland.

Dr Cowin's research projects are:

• Ultrahigh field magnetic resonance microimaging
• Simultaneous dynamic MRI and PET imaging
• Multimodal MRI/PET/CT imaging
• Development of magnetic resonance techniques for non-invasive determination of liver steatosis and fibrosis
• Monitoring changing fat distribution in diabetes and exercise trials
• Spinal cord imaging research
• Prostate research
• Application of ultrahigh field MRI microimaging for tissue analysis
• Molecular imaging of novel contrast agents by MRI and PET
• MRI zebrafish brain atlas
• Lung imaging with hyperpolarized Helium in humans and animals
• Investigation of the effect of gradient non-linearity on image quality

I am primarily interested in the interaction between the ocean and the coast and how past changes in coastal form and process can inform predictions for the future. My goals involve investigating gaps in our knowledge regarding coastal geomorphology and nearshore to shelf processes, paritcularly in the tropics and subtropics. I have a specific focus on ocean wave climate analysis, numerical wave modelling, coastal sediment budgets, coastal vulnerability and risk, and coastal and shallow marine monitoring using both field and earth observation datasets.

I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working across the Marine Ecosystem Monitoring Lab and the Earth Observation Research Centre. I am also an affiliated researcher at the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science.

Dr Damian Cox’s ares of research is Ethics, particularly ethical theory.

Dr Cox holds a BA(hons) (ANU); PhD (Melbourne).

His teaching areas include: Introduction to philosophy; Philosophy and Film; Cognitive science; and Ethics.

Dr Cox’s current research projects include:

• The moral and philosophical psychological character of integrity;
• Critiques of utilitarianism and agent-based virtue ethics; Ethics and decision theory; The limits of Moral Obligation.