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A/Prof Stephen Bell is a senior social scientist, advisor and international development research consultant with 23 years’ experience tackling global health challenges in settings across South-East Asia, Africa, Western Pacific and Europe. He works respectfully with not-for-profits, public institutions, businesses and community organisations, using innovative, inclusive, people-centred approaches to identify sustainable solutions to critical health challenges and accelerate health equity.

As Principal Research Fellow and ‘Theme Lead - Social Science and Global Health’ at the Burnet Institute, Steve’s role includes:

• Research on young people's sexual, reproductive and maternal health, including adolescent-responsive health services and systems, contraceptive innovation, safe abortion, enabling socio-structural environments, and the intersections of health and climate change;
• Providing methodological expertise, technical support and mentoring in social science, co-design and community-based, community-led research practice across the Institute’s global health programs and business development across working groups and programs;
• Supporting a growing regional network of youth research, advocacy and thought leadership hubs across Asia and the Pacific;
• Managing and delivering consultancy, advisory and research work for institutional partners.

Steve’s work brings together lived experience, socio-ecological systems thinking and social theory to understand what works (or not) in global health and social development. He has researched and published widely on HIV, sexual and reproductive health, maternal health, neglected tropical diseases, TB and Indigenous health. He is particularly interested in understanding the socio-structural determinants of health and social inequities, and injustices associated with marginalisation due to gender, sexuality, age and geography. He has published two edited collections on interpretive and community-led approaches in research, design, monitoring and evaluation: ‘Peer research in health and social development: international perspectives on participatory research’ (2021), and ‘Monitoring and evaluation in health and social development: interpretive and ethnographic perspectives’ (2016). With international colleagues, he is working on a third edited collection called, ‘Lived Experience: Critical Perspectives in a Changing World’. Steve is currently taking on new PhD students who are interested in undertaking research in any of these areas, so please do reach out to him for a chat!

Steve is Commissioner on The Lancet Global Health Commission on People-Centered Care for Universal Health Coverage, Technical Consultant (Strategy and Insights) with PSI, and Member of the International Editorial Board at Culture, Health & Sexuality. Steve has served as a Senior Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group, and has worked in senior research and consultancy roles with international governments, NGOs, UNAIDS, UNFPA and WHO.

Dr Emma Cooke is a sociologist, qualitative researcher, and postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland working in the Kids Sleep Research Group at the Child Health Research Centre and the Child Development, Education and Care Research Group at the Queensland Brain Institute. Dr Cooke researches and represents the often-overlooked stories of children, families, educators and clinicians. She works in interdisciplinary teams with a dual focus on disability and early childhood education and care. As the qualitative research lead in the Kids Sleep Research Group, Dr Cooke facilitates research training and support, and collaborates with clinicians, students and researchers to conduct qualitative research.

Dr Cooke’s research interests include the lived experiences of sleep, relaxation, wellbeing, disability, gender, intersectional inequality, healthcare, education and social services. She also has expertise in DRAWing (Departing Radically in Academic Writing) and knowledge translation. As an active member of the DRAW Group, Dr Cooke’s recent academic work is written creatively to have an emotional as well as intellectual impact.

In her PhD thesis, Dr Cooke utilised a crystallization methodological framework to gain multifaceted insights into children’s rights, early childhood discourses, and children’s relaxation and unrestful experiences in early childhood education and care. She has extensive experience interviewing children and adults across a range of contexts, and uses different qualitative analysis methodologies, including thematic analysis, discourse analysis, and creative analytical practices.

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 (45+) 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$6M) 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.

Dillon Landi joined the University of Queensland in 2024 as a Lecturer in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences. He received his PhD from the University of Auckland (Aotearoa New Zealand) and two postgraduate degrees from Columbia University (New York, USA). He has held previous academic appointments at the University of Auckland, Towson University (Maryland, USA), and the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, UK) in health, wellbeing, and education. Dillon conducts research and teaches courses related to health and wellbeing, research methods, and education. He has a particular focus on research topics related to equity and diversity in school-based health education, physical education, and sex education.

Dr Giselle Newton (she/her) is a digital health sociologist at the Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies and has worked at UQ since the completion of her PhD in 2022. Giselle is currently employed as a Research Fellow in the Australian Ad Observatory Project of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.

Giselle's research program is organised around three themes: 1) Exploring how reproductive and genetic technologies reshape relationships, families and parenthood; 2) Examining processes of participation, representation and listening in policy and legislative contexts 3) Developing participatory, digital and creative methods for social research.

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

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 and lecturer in HHSS6000 HASS Honours Research Design.

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.

Charlotte Young is a research fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research at The University of Queensland. Charlotte is a qualitative researcher with interdisciplinary interests spanning sociology, public health, health promotion, and migration studies. Her research focuses on the systemic drivers of migrant health inequities and how they can be redressed. Charlotte is also interested in the ways migrants adapt and respond to systemic and structural drivers of inequity. Recently, she has been exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted migrant and refugee background tertiary students and how young culturally and linguistically diverse social media influencers have been promoting COVID-safe behaviours online. Charlotte also explores immigrant organisations as critical settings to influence health and wellbeing. She is passionate about producing impactful research to affect positive change and tackling migrant health problems in solidarity with the communities they affect. Charlotte also has experience conducting evaluation research for large-scale health interventions.