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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.

Cameron is an Australian Research Council Industry Fellow in partnership with Micah Projects.

His work examines multiple forms of exclusion and social harms. Cameron's research focuses on the nature and experience of poverty, homelessness, and domestic and family violence. He is interested in understanding what societies do to respond to these problems, and what societies ought to do differently to address them. In collaboration with researchers and partners from not-for-profit organisations, Cameron’s program of research seeks to identify how citizens experiencing exclusion and practitioners working with them can work with governments to bring about systematic societal change.

In his first book, The Homeless Person in Contemporary Society, Cameron sought to highlight how the representation of people who are homeless as distinct informs a policy and practice agenda that he characterised as a poverty of ambition. Cameron's second book with Andrew Clarke and Francisco (Paco) Perales, Charity and Poverty in Advanced Welfare States, takes on the question how can we be just by soothing the consequences of poverty without addressing the causes of poverty.

Cameron's most recent book published by Polity Press, Homelessness, demonstrates that homelessness is a punishing, predictable, yet solvable social problem.https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=9781509554492

Dr Lynda Shevellar joined The University of Queensland in 2009. Based in the School of Social Science, Lynda won an early career award for teaching excellence in 2011, a University of Queensland Award for Teaching Excellence in 2019 and an Australian Award for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2019). She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, the Principal Practitioner - Participation and Engagement (Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation), and is currently one of the Deputy Associate Deans (Academic) for the HASS Faculty. Lynda has previously held roles in government and the community sector and is influenced by over thirty years of experience in community development, the disability sector, mental health, education, and psychology.

Lynda's research explores three closely aligned agendas: understanding the experience of people who live with heightened vulnerability; developing the awareness, agency and capacity of communities to respond to social disadvantage and inequality; and aligning community development theory and education to inform practice in working alongside people who live with heightened vulnerability. Lynda has a particular interest in the development of inclusive learning communities, through creative teaching practices, participative research strategies, and engaged citizenship.

Lynda coordinates the courses SOSC2288: Community Development - Local and International Practice; and SOCY1070: Inequality, Society and the Self.