Researchers
The School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy has many active research academics:
Associate
Professor Dale Bagshaw
Adjunct Associate Professor
Centre for Peace, Conflict and Mediation
Research Interests
- Children, parents and families - domestic violence; child protection; child-inclusive practice; children and families in transition (divorce, separation, relocation); shared parenting and family law
- Mediation, peace building and conflict resolution - family mediation; workplace relations, mediation and team-building; culture and conflict; mediation in the Asia Pacific region
- Gender - verbal abuse and construction of masculinities and femininities; gender and violence
- Conflict and bullying in schools; adolescents, conflict and educational drama
- The prevention of abuse of older people; family mediation and older people
Research Interests
- Effect of sleep loss on neurobehavioral performance, mood and sleepiness (objective and subjective)
- Metabolic consequences of sleep loss, short sleep duration and obesity, macronutrient choice and food cravings
- Sleep need, amount of sleep needed to recover a sleep debt, prophylactic sleep
- Sleep EEG, Power Spectral Analysis of EEG, cognitive workload and EEG
- Sleep disorders (apnoea), Sleep deprivation, alcohol, driving and perception of sleepiness
Post Doctoral Research Fellow
Research Interests
- Real World decision making
- Human Factors of new technology
- Applied Memory
- Human Error and non-technical skills
Associate Professor Verna Blewett
Research Interests
- Organisational culture: in particular, the place that occupational health and safety has in this domain.
- Occupational health and safety, in particular: the work-related determinants of health; the impact of the psychosocial working environment (including stress, fatigue, bullying, violence, discrimination etc); interventions at firm and industry level that lead to healthy and safe working environments; evaluating firm performance with respect to occupational health and safety.
- Participatory processes at work
- The ergonomics of organisational design and management
Research Interests
- Children's daytime performance and sleep
- Sleep and obesity in children
- Relationships between behaviour, mood and sleep
- Sleep awareness and education
- Depression and sleep
- Indigenous health and wellbeing
Nutritional Physiology Research Centre
Research Interests
- Cognitive change across the life-span
- The development of the executive functions during emerging adulthood and older adulthood
- Nutrition, life-style, cognition and psychological well-being
Research Interests
- Youth
- Rural and global labour markets
- Occupational health and safety
- Information technology
- Agriculture and gender relations among workers, families and community members
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
Research Interests
- Socially disadvantaged families with young children - circumstances, services and support
- Crime and offending; the rehabilitation of offenders
- Management of conflict, anger and aggression; road rage
- Housing options for those with mental illness
- Families at risk
Centre for Applied Psychological Research
Research Interests
- Children, parents and families
- Rights of children and young people and societal responses to the issue of children's rights
- Rights for children, particularly issues around their protection and adult responsibilities for them
- Children in isolated situations and social inclusion
- Teaching and learning processes and approaches
- Issues relating to same-sex parenting and relationship building
Research Interests
My current work investigates workforce development and
worker resilience in the human services in light of:
NGO contractual funding, reporting and accountability
arrangements and
the global financial crisis
the ageing of the community services workforce.
I am also interested in employment and labour market
programs in Australia and the theoretical and practical
issues involved in localism and locality-based policies in
economic and employment development.
Research Interests
- Scale development and psychometrics
- Ageism and ageing
- Social justice issues for oppressed populations
- Social work education
- Participatory photography as a research methodology
Post Doctoral Research Fellow
Research Interests
- Social cognitive neuroscience
- The biological basis of social cognition, especially face perception
- Autism
Post Doctoral Research Fellow
Research Interests
- Sleep and circadian rhythms - laboratory and field studies
- Modelling sleep/wake behaviour
- Fatigue-risk management policy and tools
Research Interests
- Sleep research, sleep deprivation, fatigue, workload, shiftwork
- Trucker fatigue, aviation fatigue, road safety, fatigue and safety in rail and mining
- How much sleep we need, sleep and weight gain, the sleep diet, sleep and kids, sleep and diabetes
- Human factors, error management, catastrophe avoidance
Research Interests
- Cultural Diversity - refugees, migrants; Problem Gambling and Working with Older Persons in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse communities
- Organisational Cultural Competence and Cultural Audits
- Field Education - policy and practice issues; implications for the profession; supervision approaches; teaching and learning strategies for students and supervisors; Social Work Theory and Practice
- Feminist Social Work and Gender issues - implications for Social Work practice
- Domestic Violence and Child Sexual Abuse - implications for Social Work practice
Centre for Applied Psychological Research
Research Interests
- Rural psychology
- Psychosocial risk factors
Research Interests
- Sleep psychology and physiology
- Sleep loss and circadian disruption in adults and children
- Productivity, safety and health in shiftwork operations (particularly in the rail and healthcare industries).
Research Interests
- Social Science Research
- Working with communities, predominantly indigenous and refugee communities
- Community-engaged and participatory research: "hang out and yarning together"
- Understanding communities
- Changing communities - how to work with communities for social policy and interventions
- Racism and discrimination research
Research Interests
- Sociometer Theory
- Self-esteem
- Mating & Intimate Relationships
- Evolutionary Psychology
- The Dark Triad
- Life History Theory
- Social Inclusion and Exclusion
Research Interests
- Fields: cognitive neuroscience, behavioural neuroscience, biological psychology, experimental psychology
- Methods: electroencephalogram/EEG, event related potentials/ERPs, transcranial doppler/TCD, immunohistochemistry
- Topics: age-related cognitive change (lifespan), dementia including Alzheimer's disease, cognition, cognitive reserve, neuronal-cerebrovascular interactions
- Approaches: Population and clinic-based, longitudinal and cross-sectional
Research Interests
- Remand in Custody
- Conceptualisations of Correctional Officers' work
- Human Service Work
- Street Level Bureaucrats
- Social Policy
- Restorative Justice
- Policy Development
- Correctional Administration
Research Interests
- Great Ape behaviour, cognition and conservation - the bushmeat trade crisis in Africa, and possible solutions for 100s of orphaned Great Apes in African sanctuaries responsible wildlife tourism
- Applications of Ecological Learning Theory behavioural enrichment to promote captive animal welfare
- Maintenance of behavioural diversity for successful reintroduction of captive animals
- Human-animal interactions; psychopathology and animal abuse dog behaviour and cognition, and human fear of dogs
Associate
Professor Kurt Lushington
Research Interests
- Adult Sleep Disorders
- Child Sleep Disorders
- Information Technologies in Teaching
- Stress and Fatigue
Research Interests
- Sociology of mental health, particularly gender and mental health
- Social exclusion and mental health, specifically the intersections between homelessness, gender and mental health
Research Interests
- Counselling as a Profession
- Counsellor Development and Supervision
- Clinician development and supervision versus counselling
- Addictions
- Multicultural Issues (including Sexual Minorities)
- The use of Technology in Counselling and Psychology
Research Interests
- Psychology and Indigenous Australians
- Adult development and ageing in diverse and marginalised groups of people
- Productive ageing, positive psychology of ageing, successful ageing
- Marginalisation and exclusion eg mature age unemployed people particularly Aboriginal elders
- Pedagogical research
Research Interests
- The impact of irregular duty schedules on the sleep/wake behaviour of shift workers.
- The development of biomathematical models to predict the sleep/wake behaviour of shift workers.
- The impact of sleep dose, wake duration and body clock time on neurobehavioural function.
- The effects of training load on the amount and quality of sleep obtained by high-performance athletes'.
- The impact of sleep restriction and body clock disruption on human metabolism.
Research Interests
- Sleep behaviour of elite athletes.
- The effect of sleep dose and body clock on human metabolism.
- The effect of sleep dose and body clock on neuromuscular performance.
- Eating behaviour of shift workers.
Centre for Applied Psychological Research
Research Interests
- Sociological and policy investigations of youth inequality.
Specifically understanding the complexities of young
people's social transitions in social contexts characterised by risk.
- Youth policy
- Volunteering
- Welfare reforms and social exclusion
Research Interests
- Personality disorders
- Chronic psychological difficulties
- Schema therapy model
- Remote and Rural Clinical Psychology
- Tele-psychology / Video therapy
- Eating disorders, motivation to change, 3D body scanning
Research Interests
- Indigenous issues and social policy and politics
- Indigenous organisations
- Indigenous research issues
- Community and social development
- Social and cultural capital
- Gender issues
- Human service project management
- Critical management perspectives
- Policy
- Management
- Planning and evaluation in the human services
Research Interests
- Mixed methods research techniques
- Applied anthropology
- The anthropology of sport and performance
- Human-animal relations, boundaries and hybridity
- The embodied dynamics of inter-species communication
- Equine anthrozoology
- Environmental sustainability
- Attitudes towards the environment
- Community participation, sports and volunteering
- Social justice and equity
Centre for Applied Psychological Research
Research Interests
- Psychosocial well-being at work
- Organisations with foreseeable risk for traumatic stress
- Positive organisational behaviour
Associate
Professor Adrian Vicary
Research Interests
- Teacher unionism
- Contractualism and the human services
- Civics and citizenship education
- Children and citizenship
- Social Policy and welfare labour process
Research Interests
- Domestic violence
- Violence and abuse against women
- Rurality
- Abuse of older people
- Social work theory and practice
Centre for Applied Psychological Research
Research Interests
- Animal learning
- Learned helplessness
- Psychological effects of unemployment and underemployment Job stress
Research Interests
- Homelessness
- Social work practice and education
- Domestic violence
- Employment
- Mental health
- Child protection.