Fields of Research (FoR)

• Human Movement and Sports Science not elsewhere classified ( 110699 )
  
• Mental Health ( 111714 )
  
• Psychology ( 170100 )
  
• Mental Health Services ( 420313 )
  
• Health Services And Systems ( 420300 )
  
• Clinical Psychology ( 520302 )
  
• Applied And Developmental Psychology ( 520100 )
  
• Clinical And Health Psychology ( 520300 )
  
• Sport And Exercise Psychology ( 520107 )
  
• Health Psychology ( 520304 )
  
• Counselling Psychology ( 520303 )
  

Research interests

I am leading a program of research investigating how individuals with lived experience of suicide are kept safe. There are two broad research areas we are investigating:

- keeping safe online

- keeping safe when an individual has moved into a suicide readiness state

Our focus is on those who have survived a suicide attempt as survivors are often an overlooked population for suicide research yet they are most at risk of taking their own life.

The keeping safe online is the largest research area and our interest is on who uses online spaces for suicide related reasons and how do they use these online spaces. We are interested in what occurs in these spaces, how these can be safe spaces or made safe, and how are those at risk moved to a place of safety. Our interest is not on whether the space is a risky place to talk about suicide but on how they can be safe places to talk about suicidal experiences and how are these spaces being used to talk about suicide.

We use real-life data to investigate the above phenomena and adopt a variety of research frameworks that include Ecological Momentary Assessment, Conversation Analysis, Discursive Psychology, Narrative Analysis, Thematic Analysis, Survey Designs, Scoping Reviews, and Membership Category Analysis.

Professional memberships

Registered Psychologist
Member of the Australian Psychological Society
Affiliate Member of the Queensland Counselling Association

Industry affiliations

Member of the Australasian Telehealth Society
Member of the Society for Mental Health Research
Member of the Transcript and Analysis Group
Member of the UQ QualHealth Researchers Network
Member of the International Society for Conversation Analysis Research
Member of Suicide Prevention Australia
Member of the Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association
Member of the National Tertiary Education Union

USQ Research affiliations

• Institute for Resilient Regions (IRR)
  
• Centre for Health, Informatics and Economic Research (CHIER)
  

Teaching experience(Tertiary)

22 Years

Administrative responsibilities

Associate Dean, Research, Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences

Research supervisor in the area of:

• Human Movement and Sports Science not elsewhere classified ( 110699 )
  
• Mental Health ( 111714 )
  
• Mental Health Services ( 420313 )
  
• Health Services And Systems ( 420300 )
  
• Clinical Psychology ( 520302 )
  
• Applied And Developmental Psychology ( 520100 )
  
• Clinical And Health Psychology ( 520300 )
  
• Sport And Exercise Psychology ( 520107 )
  
• Health Psychology ( 520304 )
  
• Counselling Psychology ( 520303 )
  

Research topics

• Suicide Talk: Client, Clinician and Online Interactions