Science

I have loved science my whole life.  I passionately believe that science, well conducted, can change the world.  I feel incredibly lucky to have a scientific career.

I am a senior research fellow at The University of Queensland.  I am involved in research projects across three key interests:

• Parenting including parenting intervention, parental adjustment, the transition to parenting and postnatal care
• Neurodevelopmental disabilities including autism spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy, acquired brain injury and infants at risk of neurodevelopmental disability, including due to prematurity
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Compassion Focussed Therapy particularly the application of ACT and CFT to parenting

Many of the research projects that I’m involved in occur at the crossroads of these research interests.  The nexus of my research program is the application of acceptance and commitment therapy and compassion focussed therapy to parenting and the parent-child relationship, and levering the parent-child relationship in order to optimise child development. I am especially interested in early, postnatal parenting support and ongoing parenting support for families of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities.  I love working in interdisciplinary research teams, reimagining complex issues from first principles, developing new interventions and discovering innovative clinical solutions. For the past several years I have been leading the development and testing of innovative online parenting support interventions, a research program that has become all the more important in the era of COVID19!

In my role at The University of Queensland, I lead research projects in my areas of interest, supervise research higher degree scholars and I contribute as an investigator to larger, interdisciplinary projects.

To date, I have over 70 publications in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.  This includes multiple completed randomised controlled trials of parenting intervention with families of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities or at risk of neurodevelopmental disabilities due to prematurity and multiple completed randomised controlled trials applying acceptance and commitment therapy or compassion focussed therapy to parenting.

In 2010, I obtained the Early Career Research Award at the International Helping Families Change Conference and in 2014, I received the Award for the best paper for effective intervention for people living with Cerebral Palsy at the Australasian Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine.

You can view my Google Scholar profile (which includes an up to date list of my scientific publications) here.