Prof. James Ward 

Professor James Ward is a proud Pitjantjatjara and Narungga man, an infectious diseases epidemiologist and a national leader in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. He is currently the Director of the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health at The University of Queensland.

Holding various roles over the last 25 years in Aboriginal public health policy for both government and non-government organisations, in urban regional and remote communities he has built a national program of research in the epidemiology and prevention of infectious diseases, with a particular focus on STIs, HIV and viral hepatitis in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

He has served on numerous national and international committees including the Communicable Diseases Network of Australia, the Australian National Council on Alcohol and Drugs, the CDNA COVID-19 Working Group and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander COVID-19 Taskforce. He has over 160 publications and leads several large scale public health and infectious diseases studies.

Prof. Mark Hughes 

Professor Mark Hughes is a social worker and has worked in health, aged care and mental health settings in both Australia and the UK. He has also worked at the University of Queensland, the University of New South Wales, and Goldsmiths College, London. Professor Hughes is a former Chair of Academic Board and Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at Southern Cross University. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Australasian Journal on Ageing and is a former Editor of Australian Social Work. He is also a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts.

Dr Megan Ross 

Megan is a postdoctoral fellow at RECOVER Injury Research Centre, The University of Queensland. She is part of a research team, led by Professor Trevor Russell, which focuses on developing more effective and efficient health services supported by technology innovation. Megan's current research projects include exploring consumer perspectives of the telerehabilitation service delivery model, factors that influence the uptake and utilisation of telerehabilitation, the impact of rapid transitions to telerehabilitation in the clinical education and hospital environments and exploring the acceptability and usability of digital health interventions.

Megan is a physiotherapist and early career researcher who completed her PhD in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Queensland. Her PhD explored the clinical presentation of tibialis posterior tendinopathy and was the first to investigate the reliability of common clinical tests for tibialis posterior tendinopathy and their relationship with structural tendon changes on imaging. In addition to her current research areas of interest at RECOVER, Megan is interested in the experience of LGBTQIA+ and other vulnerable populations, including veterans, accessing and utilising health care. Dr Ross has received over $50, 000 AUD in funding to co-design, implement and evaluate an educational resource to improve physiotherapists cultural safety for LGBTQIA+ communities. Megan has a broad range of research skills that span both quantitative and qualitative methods, including systematic reviews, cross-sectional and longitudinal study designs and data analysis, interviews and focus group discussions and thematic analysis.

Dr Alison Kennedy 

Director of the National Centre for Farmer Health, Alison Kennedy is a Behavioural Scientist who has lived and worked in Victoria’s rural farming community for over 2 decades. Her expertise in rural/farmer mental health and suicide prevention has drawn on a range of innovative techniques including digital interventions, digital storytelling, community education programs and peer support models. Alison has led numerous farmer mental health projects and continues to build the Centre’s capacity and reach by working collaboratively with researchers, farmers and industry stakeholders across Australia and internationally. Her expertise has been recognised through research awards, numerous advisory roles, peer review publications, international research consultation, invited presentations and expert witness testimony before the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. Alison is passionate about co-designing the Centre’s research, education and services in collaboration with the community and industry—to ensure the Centre’s work continues to be effective, relevant and tailored to the needs of rural farming communities.

Dr James Lucas

Dr James Lucas is a social worker and Senior Lecturer in Deakin’s School of Health and Social Development and Institute for Health Transformation. They are also a proud queer person. As a founding co-convenor of Deakin’s Queering-Up Equity and Equality Research Spaces (Q-UEERS) Network (https://www.deakin.edu.au/q-ueers), they are passionate about “queering-up” mainstream health research and service spaces. They have applied this passion co-leading various research and education initiatives including the Translation Research in Mental Health (TRiM) Stream within the Institute for Health Transformation, as Course Director for Deakin’s Bachelor of Social Work (Honours) program, and as Chief Editor of the trans-Tasman journal Advances in Social Work and Welfare Education. Their ongoing research program focuses on health systems equity for queer communities, in particular, strengthening community capacity in building safe and equitable primary healthcare for rural queer young people.

Dr Amie O'Shea

Amie O’Shea (she/her) is a queer Senior Lecturer in the School of Health & Social Development at Deakin University. Amie is passionate about building connections between universities and queer communities and the meaningful partnerships required for authentic co-design and mutual capacity building. Amie led the peer researcher team which produced More than ticking a box: LGBTIQA+ people with disability talking about their lives and the 3-year Rainbow Inclusion project which created information resources with and for people with cognitive disability and their supporters. She has worked as an Auslan-English interpreter and co-designed the world first unit Auslan and the deaf community: Health and wellbeing which addresses health inequities for signing deaf populations.

Dr Ada Cheung 

A/Prof Ada Cheung is a clinician scientist; endocrinologist at Austin Health and a NHMRC/Dame Kate Campbell Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne. She established and leads the Trans Health Research Group at The University of Melbourne which aims to improve the health and well-being of the transgender and gender diverse community. Her research has had significant impact leading to new gender clinics in Victoria, a statewide training program for health professionals and national guidelines on hormone therapy. Her commitment to co-creation to improve trans health was recognised with the GLOBE LGBT Ally of the Year.

Dr Paul Simpson

Dr Paul Leslie Simpson (he/him), PhD, is a research fellow of the Justice Health Research Program at the School of Population Health, University of NSW, Associate of the Australian Human Rights Institute, and Associate of the Centre of Research Excellence in Violence Perpetration Prevention. His research centres on health and marginalisation among justice system involved populations with a focus on sexuality and gender diverse, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples using diverse methodologies. He has developed innovative deliberative research methods to involve and give voice to those with lived experience of incarceration in the coproduction of research outcomes. Dr Simpson is a Chief Investigator and principal coordinator of the NHMRC-funded second national survey on the Sexual Health and Attitudes of people in Australian Prisons (SHAAP2), and a Chief Investigator on the Ian Potter Foundation-funded study on Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCHOs) accessing Medicare in prisons. He is a co-founding member of the NSW Trans and Gender Diverse people in the Criminal Justice System Advisory Council and Co-Chair of the Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network Human Research Ethics Committee.