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Elizabeth-Rose Ahearn is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Queensland (UQ). Her research centres on measuring and evaluating the impact of charitable not-for-profit organisations, as well as other purpose-driven entities, including those in the public sector, social enterprises, corporate social responsibility efforts, and social impact bonds. She has a particular interest in leveraging digital technologies to enhance impact measurement, improve management processes, and support evidence-based decision-making. Elizabeth-Rose has extensive experience as an evaluator, having collaborated with a diverse range of for-purpose organisations, including a research secondment with the Department of Social Services focused on digital tools for advancing Australia's social impact investing sector. Alongside her role at UQ, she serves as the Co-Chair of the Queensland chapter of the Social Impact Measurement Network of Australia (SIMNA).

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.

Michelle is a sociologist and lawyer: her research focuses on decision-making and the operation of law and regulation in practice for people with disabilities and other impairments to communication and legal capacity. She has research interests in the sociology of law, decision-making (supported and substituted), legal personhood, the UNCPRD, disability law, legal and administrative transition to adulthood, communication impairments, and profound intellectual disability. Her work examines decision-making in practice in a range of areas, including health and aged care, banking and finance, income support, and the NDIS. Michelle is trained in both qualitative and quantitative methods, and has extensive experience in research development, design, and practice, as well as health consumer research and co-design.

Michelle works on the MRFF funded project: Unspoken, Unheard, Unmet: Improving Access to Preventative Health Care through Better Conversations about Care. She leads the experience gathering stage of the project, the co-design elements of the work, and the development of guidelines about communication, decision-making, and aged care.

Michelle is also a consumer and disability advocate, with experience in strategic policy development, implementation, and evaluation, including the co-design of state level strategy for transition to adulthood health care, and on Australia’s National Living Evidence Taskforce. She is also the consumer board Chair of Child Unlimited, a consortium of researchers, clinicians, and consumers working towards best evidence-based practice in health care for children and young adults with chronic ill health and disabilities, and co-chair of the consumer advisory committee for the ARC Centre of Excellence Life Course Centre.

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.

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.

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.

Kiah Smith is a Sociologist with expertise in environment, development and critical food studies. With a strong record of international publications on food justice, food security, resilience, financialisation, ethical trade, green economy, sustainable livelihoods, gender empowerment and food system governance, Kiah’s work contributes new understandings of the social dimensions of food system transformation at the intersection of multiple crises. Using mostly qualitative, participatory methodologies (such as action research and future scenario planning), her research emphasises the role that civil society plays in transformative policy making that is systems-focused and inclusive of social-ecological perspectives. For example, her ARC DECRA study - Fair Food, Civil Society and the Sustainable Development Goals - examined how civic stakeholders are able to resist, reshape or redefine what a just and sustainable food system might look like, based on co-design and collaboration with civil society, local government, advocacy groups and grassroots food actors (food hubs, community gardens, and food charities) in Australia. This interdisciplinary research agenda can best be summarised as one where ‘food futures’ are closely connected with ‘deep’ sustainability, rights, justice and empowerment, within the growing field of ‘sustainability transitions’. Other past and present studies include: Multifunctional horticulture - land, labour and environments; Ethical consumption and COVID; Responsible innovation in digital agriculture; Employment policy and indigenous food sovereignty in remote Australia; Financialisation of food and farmland in Australia; Resilience and governance of Australian food systems during crisis; and Mapping civil society, human rights and the SDGs. Kiah has conducted research in Australia and internationally, she has worked with local NGOs (in Africa and Australia), with the United Nations Research Institute in Geneva, and in multidisciplinary research teams spanning the social and natural sciences both here and abroad. Kiah is also a Future Earth Fellow, treasurer of the Australasian Agrifood Research Network, and executive member of the RC40 on Food and Agriculture in the International Sociological Association. Her work at the nexus of academia and policy/advocacy contributes to the growing movement for the right to food in Australia and globally.

Tomasz holds a MA and PhD in Sociology from the University of Warsaw, Poland. He has joined Wojtek Tomaszewski’s team at ISSR, coming from the University of Warsaw where he was an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology and a researcher at the Education Quality Evaluation Unit (PEJK). Moreover, he worked at the National Processing Institute (OPI) in Warsaw where he was a member of the team responsible for developing the Polish Graduate Tracking System (ELA) on behalf of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

He was also a visiting scholar at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley and The Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences (BAGSS), University of Bamberg, Germany. Tomasz’s research interests include individual educational trajectories especially within tertiary education, labour market outcomes of graduates, and social inequality and its impact on the educational and professional paths of young people.