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 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 for Covid-19 and Monkeypox. 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.
Dr Lutfun Nahar Lata is a Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Lutfun's primary research area focuses on the Sociology of work and employment including the gig economy and the future of work.
Prior to joining the University of Melbourne, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland. Currently, Lutfun is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland.
She has written about gig economy, urban marginality, poverty governance, housing and place-based disadvantage. She is a mixed-methods researcher with extensive experience in conducting and publishing qualitative, quantitative and digital research and working with multidisciplinary teams that include stakeholders from academia, industry and local and central governments.
Lutfun is the author of Spatial Justice, Contested Governance and Livelihood Challenges in Bangladesh (Routledge 2023). Her research has been published in journals such as Current Sociology, The Sociological Review, Sociology Compass, Gender, Work & Organization, Cities, Geographical Research, Housing Policy Debate, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Government Information Quarterly.
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.
