Find an expert

I am an accomplished research leader capable of building multidisciplinary teams that develop innovative solutions to complex problems. I have an international reputation for improving health of communities by creating knowledge, translating it into real life scenarios and evaluating improvements for people, health care providers and funders. My work spans primary care, community care, hospital services, allied health, health promotion and wellbeing and health policy.

I have a clinical background as an Advanced Accredited Practising Dietitian and Exercise Physiologist, which has provided me with an understanding of the way health professionals and their services enable heatlh and wellbeing in people, groups and communities. My research career to date has been exemplary, as evidenced by multiple awards and accolades, including two NHMRC fellowships, a national award for excellence in PhD supervision, fellowships of learned societies and several awards for research excellence.

I am a collaborative, ambitious worker with a strong ability to bring people together and generate large-scale research endeavours that have maximum impact for health and wellbeing.

I am a health psychologist and researcher with a strong focus on health psychology and mental health, particularly within First Nations and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities. My research expertise lies in the development and evaluation of health and wellbeing programs, and cultural adaptations to programs and research methods to more effectively measure mental health and wellness. I have extensive clinical and industry experience, including roles in program design, evaluation, and advocacy within First Nations health, chronic disease management and chronic pain.

Currently, my work spans several projects, including evaluating mental health services for First Nations Australians and investigating the needs of First Nations carers for loved ones with mental health concerns. I also have a keen interest in cultural correlates and expressions of mental disorder, in empowering people to make health behaviour changes, and to engage more effectively with healthcare services through individual, group and health promotion interventions.

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 Claudia Bull is a Research Fellow in psychiatric epidemiology at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research (QCMHR), University of Queensland. She holds a Bachelor of Nutrition with First Class Honours (2017) and a PhD in Health Services Research from the Griffith University School of Nursing and Midwifery (2022). Claudia's research largely focusses on undertaking complex data analysis using large, linked, population-based administrative datasets to understand equity, patterns of health service use, and outcomes in vulnerable Australian populations. She is particularly interested in the intergenerational and lifetime effects of child abuse and neglect in Australia, as well as understanding how health services can better support Child Protection efforts. Claudia is also well-versed in the development, psychometric evaluation and implementation of PROMs and PREMs for health systems performance measurement. She is internationally recognised for her research related to PROMs and PREMs, having published several seminal and highly cited papers, as well as pioneering methods for consumer engagement in deciding what questions are relevant and important in PROMs and PREMs. Claudia is an inaugural member of the South Australian Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health's Generic PROM Selection Subcommittee, and is currently collaborating internationally with researchers in The Netherlands, Iran, France and Spain to cross-culturally validate an Emergency Department PREM. Claudia's expertise in population-based linked administrative health data analysis, as well as PROMs and PREMs, positions her as a well-rounded and capable researcher. Claudia's international collaborations underscore her ability to work across cultural and geographical boundaries, enriching her research with a global perspective. Moreover, her track record of published research, practical involvement in healthcare initiatives, and ongoing projects reflect a proactive and influential presence in the field.

I am a Biological Anthropologist with expertise in palaeopathology and palaeohistology. Having recently completed a PhD at The Australian National University (ANU), my research covers a variety of interdisciplinary topics, from reconstructing individual and population health through skeletal remains to developing novel technical methods for analysing ancient diseases. I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with ARC Future Fellow Dr Justyna Miszkiewicz, examining bone health through human history.

In my research, I am particularly interested in exploring the biological aspects of ancient diseases, especially the microstructural traces they left in bones. My work has focused heavily on treponematosis and its impact on human health, utilising techniques like confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) and histological analysis of undecalcified bone.

Previously, I have worked as a Lecturer and Demonstrator at ANU and La Trobe University, teaching human osteology, palaeopathology, and genomics. As a research assistant, I worked under the supervision of Dr Justyna Miszkiewicz and Professor Alison Behie at ANU, contributing to projects on peri-natal health in response to natural disasters, primatology and natural resource usage, and bone health and osteoporosis. Outside of academica, I have experience as a Forensics Officer with Victoria Police and working in tissue culture labs at CSIRO.

Dr. Adam Craig is an infectious disease epidemiologist and global health system researcher. He has more than 25 years of experience in health, having worked across and with Australian, Asian and Pacific health authorities. Among other areas, his research explores the use of digital technology to support health information collection and exchange and how technology may support improved health system function. Other projects Adam is involved in include the development of policy advice for Pacific leaders related to enhanced early warning disease surveillance, the use of digital technology to support health care delivery and community participation in disease vector tracking. In addition to his academic roles, Adam is a senior advisor to the Australia-Indonesia Health Security Partnership and a researcher for the Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.

Dr Stephanie Duncombe is a Research Fellow at the School of Public Health, University of Queensland. Her research intersects understanding inequalities in physical activity through epidemiological methods and tailored interventions to reduce these inequalities using health promotion frameworks. Stephanie has specific interests in gender inequalities and paediatrics. Stephanie completed her PhD on high-intensity interval training within schools and led an intervention study titled Making a HIIT. She has a multidisciplinary background, including epidemiology, exercise physiology, and health promotion. Stephanie is also a Lecturer at the School of Public Health and coordinates courses related to work-integrated learning and health promotion.

Shannon Edmed is a Research Fellow at the Child Health Research Centre and ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families Over the Life Course (Life Course Centre). She has an interest in environmental effects on sleep (including household and neighbourhood characteristics), and mental health and wellbeing.

Carl (Saibai Koedal) is a PhD Candidate studying the epidemiology of rheumatic heart disease in Queensland using linked hospital and administrative data. Currently, Carl holds an academic appointment (Lecturer, Physiotherapy) in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, the University of Queensland, and maintains a clinical role as a Staff Physiotherapist at The Prince Charles Hospital. Alongside research, Carl is also working to strengthen relationships between remote Torres Strait Islander communities and UQ to explore opportunities for education, student clinical placement and research partnerships.

Professor Brenda Gannon is an international interdisciplinary leader providing evidence and solutions for health and social care systems, spanning across economics, medicine and social science, in collaboration with academia and industry. She brings extensive experience and expertise in program and policy development related to health, social inclusion, and citizen science, fostering and advancing excellence at the intersection of many disciplines.

Working at the interface of health service delivery, strategic planning and practice influence, and health economics more broadly, across many sectors, enables her research to inform optimisation of health care and workforce organisation. The models are translatable and transferrable across many sectors, including ageing, mental health, child and the working populations.

She is a Professor in the School of Economics and an Affiliate Professor at the Mater Research Institute, The University of Queensland. She is also an affiliate member of CEPAR (ARC Centre for Research Excellence in Population Ageing Research). Since 2022, she is Honorary Adjunct Professor at University of Galway, Ireland. She was Director of Research in the School of Economics from 2018-2023. . She has developed a range of projects on topics of dementia, physical activity and cognition, health and health care utilization, and consumer directed care and home care. She has led and worked extensively on interdisciplinary research with gerontologists,several clinicians and methodologists. Her work has been influential in the development of programs for falls preventions and informing policy on disability and social inclusion, and has positively impacted on the health of many older people across the world. Her work also spans across the lifecyle from birth, and she has worked with clinicians on trials for newborns with breathing difficulities. She is the Health Economics and Epidemiology lead for the Queensland Family Cohort (QFC) Study, the pilot led by Mater Research, and is on the QFC Governance Committee, focusing on maternal mental health, inequalities of opportunity, alcohol use and related health care use and costs.

Professor Gannon’s research carries a dual role, (1) as an applied health economist using big and complex data, utilising health economics theory and concepts to test the validity of causal hypotheses, (2) collaborator across all Faculties leading critical economic evaluations. Her research is funded by her position as chief investigator on projects from the Australian Research Council, National Health and Medical Research Council, MRFF, EU H2020, Health Research Board, Ireland and the National Institute for Health Research, UK. She is the lead economist on projects in dementia, emergency care and paediatric care. All studies incorporate methodological innovations and applied research. She has provided advice to government at senior levels, and had a Ministerial appointment, on the Medical Services Advisory Committee Evaluation Sub-Committee 2017-2021. She sits regularly as a panel member of various NHMRC and MRFF grant review committees and has also previously appointed to the EU Commission grant panels. She has been invited to give several talks at international fora, including a key note talk on ageing and longevity at the National Academy of Medicine, Global Roadmap to Healthy Longevity, in Washington DC. Professor Gannon was an elected Professorial member of the Academic Board at UQ 2018-2022. In 2023, Professor Gannon was elected a Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has been elected as a Council Member of Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2024.

Dr Penny Haora (Ngāti Pūkenga, Ngāti Māhanga) is a Research Fellow in the UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous Health.

Penny researches innovations and system transformation for better maternity care with a focus on First Nations families. She uses qualitative, mixed methods, community-based participatory, and realist approaches. As a First Nations Māori researcher, Penny is learning Kaupapa Māori and Indigenist research approaches and works to see the revaluing of Indigenous knowledges and science. The overall aim of her research is to support healthy families through better births. She does this by conducting and facilitating research that places the lived experiences of mums and bubs, families and community front and centre.

Penny aims for her work to incentivise action to address entrenched inequities in maternity care, such as care quality/safety (including cultural safety) and access. She has worked in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community organisations, internationally with remote communities and in post-conflict settings with local and international non-government organisations, and within diverse organisational contexts.

Penny is leading projects with a view to better understanding and evaluating First Nations-led maternity and family care and wellbeing. From 2019 to 2022, she managed the Building on Our Strengths (BOOSt) project based on the beautiful Lands of the Yuin Nation (NSW) embedded with Waminda South Coast Aboriginal Women’s Health and Wellbeing Organisation. Penny completed a Doctor of Philosophy in 2013 enrolled at the ANU working on a project based in Thailand. Her Master of Public Health research was undertaken in Rasuwa District, Nepal, and she has around six years of experience working in research/evaluation/management and clinical roles in Thailand, Nepal, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Papua New Guinea.

Penny is available to supervise PhD students, Honours and Master of Public Health projects.

Stephen is a Narungga and Ngarrindjeri man from South Australia, and Senior Research Fellow with the University of Queensland Poche Centre for Indigenous Health and PhD candidate with the School of Public Health at the University of Queensland.

Stephen is an epidemiologist and public health researcher who has worked with Aboriginal communities and organisations across Australia. Stephen has experience in conducting health services research, sexual health, adolescents and young people’s health and wellbeing, and Indigenous methodology.

Stephen completed a Master of Philosophy in Applied Epidemiology at the Australian National University in 2019, and has a Master of Public Health (Flinders University, 2013), a Graduate Certificate Health Services Research and Development (The University of Wollongong, 2012), and a Bachelor of Health Sciences (Public Health) (The University of Adelaide, 2008).

Overview

Dr Adam Hulme studies complex adaptive systems and applies methods and models from the systems and complexity sciences to policy-resistant issues in various domains. His current interests lie in the areas of regional, rural and remote health and public health more broadly. Dr Hulme prefers to adopt a systems thinking or holistic perspective over a reductionist one, as doing so is to consider the whole system, or multiple interacting elements of it, as the primary unit of analysis. As an expert in systems modelling and analysis, Dr Hulme has applied an extensive list of over 20 qualitative and quantitative systems science approaches to address complex problems that threaten to disrupt performance and safety within various sociotechnical systems contexts. This includes the use of System Dynamics modelling and simulation, which is a relatively distinctive approach and practiced deeply by a select few inter/nationally. He is the #1 mid-career researcher in Australia (#10 nationally), for the topic ‘systems analysis’, placing him in the top 0.033% of 208,280 published authors worldwide on this topic (Expertscape).

Background

Dr Hulme is a Research Fellow and School Research Chair at Southern Queensland Rural Health (SQRH), Toowoomba, Queensland. He has qualifications in Sports and Exercise Science (BSc HONS; England), Health Promotion (MA; Australia), and obtained a PhD in Sports Injury Epidemiology and Systems Human Factors in August 2017 (Ballarat, Victoria, Australia). His doctoral program was completed at the Australian Collaboration for Research into Injury in Sport and its Prevention (Federation University Australia), which is recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as a world leading research centre.

Following his PhD, Dr Hulme spent four years as a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Centre for Human Factors and Sociotechnical Systems (CHFSTS) at the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC). In this role, he conceived, led, developed, and published the world’s first Agent-Based Model (ABM; complex systems microsimulation) of running injury causation in the sports sciences alongside an international multidisciplinary author team. Dr Hulme has also published multiple peer reviewed systems modelling and analysis applications to address various systems problems in leading international journals.

As a result of his achievements, Dr Hulme was offered employment as a full-time Research Fellow on an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery project though the CHFSTS. It was during this time that he worked on the theoretical development and testing of state-of-the-art systems-based safety management methods in an effort to overcome known limitations with traditional and reductive scientific approaches. Dr Hulme has applied systems-based risk assessment and incident analysis methods to multiple work domains, including defence, construction, healthcare, manufacturing, mining, sports, transportation (e.g., road, rail, aviation, maritime), and general workplace safety.

Current role

In his current role at SQRH, Dr Hulme is advancing the complexity science and systems thinking research agenda in the area of regional, rural and remote health. He is using conceptual-qualitative and computational-quantitative System Dynamics modelling to holistically map and analyse the behaviours that occur within complex rural health systems. Dr Hulme was recently awarded a highly competitive ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award (DE 2024) to explore how climate change and extreme weather events may further impact the rural health workforce maldistribution crisis using systems science methodologies. He warmly welcomes collaborations with other researchers, both within and outside of the UQ network, and is readily available to discuss potential HDR projects that involve systems and complexity science applications to any problem in most domains.

Paul specialises in Assessment and Management of Risk and Impact of Socio-Environmental determinants on the Wellbeing of our younger generations across their life span.

His overall vision is about how we use Environmental Health Intelligence to improve decision-making towards delivering more efficient Environmental Health Practices, Services and Solutions for local and regional communities in remote and disadvantaged socio-economic settings.

Within the complex interdisciplinary domains that hold the socio-environmental determinants of wellbeing, Paul’s operational research focuses on how / what interventions would best support communities to prevent, mitigate and adapt to EH risk and impact in rapidly changing environments and climate.

Sheleigh Lawler is a health psychology expert, with research interests in understanding and intervening on health behaviours, particularly the psychosocial sequelae in relation to disease and intervention outcomes. Her breadth of knowledge across public health, health promotion and health psychology allows for a unique perspective, particularly on understanding the importance of communication. Her work involves multi-disciplinary teams of researchers, industry partners, and government organisations.

Dr Meron Lewis is a Research Fellow with the University of Queensland’s food pricing research team in the School of Public Health. Her research has included supporting Prof. Amanda Lee with the development and implementation of the Healthy Diets ASAP suite of protocols in the co-creation of transformative food systems for public health and wellbeing, equity and environmental sustainability, including invited work for remote First Nations communities. This research has also been used by the QLD Council of Social Services (QCOSS) in preparation of household budget standards for inclusion in their Living Affordability in Queensland 2022 & 2023 Reports.

Beatrice is a Postdoctoral Researcher with a special interest in behaviour change and digital health promotion. She has extensive experience in clinical trial management and evaluation. Following on from a Master’s Degree in Medical Science, her PhD was dedicated to the development of a mobile app that targeted adults’ physical activity and sleep health. The body of work she has contributed to has incorporated a wide range of research methods and study designs and her research outputs have added important knowledge to the field of multiple behaviour change and non-clinical sleep interventions. In more recent roles, Beatrice has worked on wide-scale implementation projects targeting the health and wellbeing of young children. Beatrice’s work is about maximising impact, both in the scientific field and out in the community by way of generating high quality data and improving equity of access to evidence-based resources.

Dr Anton Pak is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for the Business and Economics of Health, The University of Queensland. Anton is an applied economist by training and his research interests focus on the behaviour of patients and their choices, utilisation of emergency department services, waiting time modelling, and the economics of digital health. Anton examines empirical questions by utilising health economics theory and concepts and by analysing large panel and cross-sectional datasets (including linked data) using classical econometrics techniques, as well as machine learning methods.

Anton is currently co-leading an Emergency Medicine Foundation funded project “ED waiting time predictions in real-time: development of data acquisition system and performance evaluation of advanced statistical models.”, which is being undertaken in partnership with Princess Alexandra Hospital. Anton has worked extensively on interdisciplinary research with statisticians, mathematical modellers, clinicians, epidemiologists, and public health experts.

Prior to joining the Centre, Anton worked as a Research Fellow in Applied Economics and Data Scientist at James Cook University. His previous experience also includes working as a management consultant and university lecturer.

Anton has a PhD (Economics) from The University of Queensland.

Dr Erin Pitt is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the area of Childhood Allergy and Epidemiology within the Child Health Research Centre (CHRC). Erin possesses a Bachelor of Health Science (Nutrition); a Master of Public Health (Epidemiology and Research Methods); and a PhD, which was conferred in March, 2020. Her doctoral research investigated the influence of local food environment and socio-ecological determinants on early childhood dietary intake using a mixed methods research approach, which had a strong focus on nutritional epidemiology in the context of public health nutrition.

Prior to pursuing an academic career, Erin worked as a Public Health Nutritionist with Queensland Health where she managed, designed, implemented, and evaluated community-based public health nutrition interventions in a range of settings and locations including rural/remote and metropolitan regions. Erin collaborated and engaged with a range of diverse government and non-government organisations and industry bodies to address priority areas including rural and remote food supply issues, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and nutrition, children’s food literacy and local government nutrition-related policy and planning.

Erin is currently working on a diverse range of projects including determinants of developing cow’s milk allergy in infancy; the role of migration in allergy prevalence; and the potential co-occurrence of allergy with neurodevelopmental conditions. She has a particular interest in the role of maternal and child dietary diversity as well as socio-economic determinants and their association with the development of allergy in children.

Dr Melinda Protani is an epidemiologist with over 15 years experience in research and tertiary education. She is the current Program Director for the Master of Epidemiology at UQ. Her research is focussed on cancer aetiology, survivorship and patterns of care, with a particular interest in inequity in access to health services and the receipt of optimal cancer care. Dr Protani has experience in a number of methods including medical record audits, surveys of the general population, patient groups and clinicians, and data linkage using registry and administrative datasets.