Show Me
Mrs Melissa Aguey-Zinsou is an occupational therapist with extensive experience working in a variety of roles in the field of mental health. Her research interests are consumer participation, strengths-based approaches, the mental health workforce and occupation focused interventions, including interventions to support people with mental health issues to find and keep work.
Ms Helen Badge’s research interests have a broad focus across person-centred care and mutli-centre health services research. She is completing a PhD exploring the association with compliance with evidence-based clinical guidelines and patient outcomes after joint replacement surgery. She is an active researcher with the Agency for Clinical Innovation Emergency Care Institute and holds an honorary Clinical Research Fellow position with the Southwest Sydney Emergency Medicine Research Institute. She is particularly interested in partnerships with consumers in research and is part of an experience-based codesign team exploring how to use patient experience to develop interventions to improve experience for people who are blind or have low vision in hospital. Helen has an interest in evidence-based measurement and her masters research involved developing an assessment to measure the impact of brain injury on people’s lifestyles after brain injury.
She supervises OT Honours students and supports undergraduate medicine student research projects. She is also developing her skills in advanced data analyses using R language and qualitative data analysis.
Ms Liana Cahill has a particular interest in adult neurological rehabilitation and methods to increase the use of evidence-based practice in this field. Her PhD research has focused on knowledge translation in stroke rehabilitation and involved the publication of a Cochrane review on implementation interventions in stroke rehabilitation. Her research has investigated strategies to increase evidence use by occupational therapists and physiotherapists in upper limb somatosensory rehabilitation with stroke survivors. She has used both quantitative and qualitative approaches, along with implementation theories, to explore knowledge translation issues. In addition to her PhD studies, Liana has been involved in research exploring the role of consumers in enhancing evidence uptake by health care professionals.
Dr Susan Darzins is a senior lecturer in occupational therapy, she has a particular interest in research focused on occupational therapy interventions designed to enhance adults’ health, sense of wellbeing and participation in their life situations. Her research has used quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods focused on validity of assessments and participation-related outcome measures relevant to occupational therapy practice and measurement of the impact of occupational therapy services in inpatient health care settings.
Dr Belinda Deramore Denver is optimising outcomes for children and families in the field of childhood onset disability with specific interests in the field of cerebral palsy and the field of vision impairment. She recognises the importance of good measurement practices for both clinical and research outcomes, and her PhD focused on instrument design through development of the measure of early vision use. She has experience in a range of quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods research.
Mr Nick Flynn is an occupational therapy lecturer in the area of adult rehabilitation. He is currently completing his PhD investigating the implementation of upper limb robotics into routine clinical practice for stroke survivors. He is also running projects exploring the clinical use of non-immersive virtual technology and interactive touchscreen platforms in the rehabilitation setting as well as sleep characteristics of community-dwelling stroke survivors. He continues to work clinically in the rehabilitation unit at the Mater Private Hospital (Brisbane) and has over 18 years of clinical experience specialising in adult physical rehabilitation.
Associate Professor Elspeth Froude is the Deputy Head, School of Allied Health, and Head of Discipline in occupational therapy. She leads the national occupational therapy program across three campuses.
Associate Professor Froude is the
current Chair of the WFOT Congress Scientific Program Committee (Paris 2022). Her research interests are in the areas of working with children, cerebral palsy, autism, developmental coordination disorder and knowledge translation. She is a
certified Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) Approach instructor – an evidenced-based cognitive approach which addresses child chosen motor goals.
Associate Professor Froude has also researched in the area of scholarship of learning and teaching in simulated learning.
Dr Rosamund Harrington’s research focuses on building inclusive communities through sophisticated environmental design. It sits at the intersection of health, disability, injury insurance, ageing and social policy. Informed by ecological systems theory, her research seeks to understand how disparate policy frameworks interact to influence health and broader service systems operation and experiences of care and support for people experiencing disability and social disadvantage. In 2014 she was awarded a UQ Deans Commendation for Research Higher Degree Excellence for her PhD thesis Motor Accident Insurance Scheme Design and Pathways after Severe Traumatic Brain Injury which promoted the introduction of the no-fault National Injury Insurance Scheme Queensland (NIIS-Q). She has a strong track record building industry partnerships, and co-founding and chairing cross-sectoral collaboratives. She is the Chief Investigator on the five year transdisciplinary $1.15million NHMRC Ideas Project APP1187656 Inter-generational Learning and Living Campus: A New Model for Healthy Senior Living and Integrated School Communities across Urban and Regional Australia and the NDIS Economic and Community Participation Grant funded project Breaking out of the Silos: Collaborating for employment outcomes for youth with disabilities .
Dr Claire Lynch graduated with a Bachelor of Occupational Therapy (Honours) from the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland in 2008. She has worked clinically in community health, acute care and in a specialised renal service. She completed her Professional Doctorate of Clinical Sciences in Occupational Therapy in 2017 through La Trobe University, Melbourne. Since 2017, Dr Lynch has worked in a full-time academic role as a lecturer in occupational therapy and the Victorian OT Professional Practice Coordinator at ACU.
Dr Lynch has a particular interest in exploring sexuality from an occupational perspective. To achieve this, her research has focused on investigating the perceptions of occupational therapists and occupational therapy students in addressing sexuality. She has also extended her research to review the importance of sexuality to various consumer groups to determine what interventions are required to address this area of practice effectively.
Associate Professor Laura Miller is an occupational therapist with clinical experience in paediatrics and the management of health and disability services. Following the completion of her Bachelor Degree with Honours in Occupational Therapy in Western Australia, Laura worked as an occupational therapist for children with neurological and developmental disorders with Rocky Bay Inc. and The Cerebral Palsy Association of Western Australia (WA). Laura was then appointed Manager of Early Intervention Services with the Autism Association of WA where she coordinated early intervention services for children with Autism and their families. Following this, Laura moved overseas to gain international experience in paediatric rehabilitation. Whilst working in London, Laura completed a Master of Health Services Management through Curtin University WA. On return to Australia, Laura commenced a teaching position at Edith Cowan University WA, lecturing in Paediatrics and Neurological Rehabilitation and was Coordinator of Princess Margaret Hospital Occupational Therapy Services. In 2011, Laura moved to Brisbane to commence a doctoral degree at Queensland Cerebral Palsy and Rehabilitation Research Centre. Laura was awarded an NHMRC Allied Health Postgraduate Scholarship and a University of Queensland Research Scholarship to complete her doctoral studies. Laura's PhD focussed on investigating and evaluating in a randomized trial the impact of mastery motivation on occupational performance outcomes following upper limb intervention for school-aged children with congenital hemiplegia. Laura's current research aims to improve family centred practices, therapy planning and service delivery related to motor rehabilitation programs for children with physical disabilities and motor delay, and their families.
Associate Professor Loretta Sheppard’s research interests are primarily with adolescents and young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities related to everyday living and self-determination, and participation in adult life situations. She has undertaken a series of projects seeking to understand barriers and facilitators to employment, including investigating environmental supports in the workplace using the PREP (Pathways and Resources for Engagement and Participation) protocol. A current project conducted in partnership with Onemda Research and Innovation Centre and funded through a 3-year $485,168 NDIA grant, aims to develop and evaluate a collaborative service model to support youth with disabilities into employment. This project aims to identify and address environmental, personnel, and practice factors that contribute to reduced social and economic participation for young people with disability. It builds on previous research exploring goal setting, self-determination and school-based transition programs for young people with disabilities.
Dr Margaret Wallen is a senior lecturer in occupational therapy at the North Sydney Campus. She has a particular interest in optimising outcomes for people with cerebral palsy. Her research has largely focused on children with cerebral palsy. She is also interested in outcome measurement, evidence-based practice and knowledge translation. Her research with children has included upper Iimb interventions in infants and children with cerebral palsy including constraint-induced movement therapy, bimanual interventions, wrist/hand orthoses and effects of occupational therapy and Botulinum toxin-A injections. Additionally, she is involved with the Eyes on Communication team to identify and evaluate best practice implementation of eye-gaze control technology for enhancing participation and communication of people with cerebral palsy with significant disability. She recently published clinical guidelines to drive best practice in this field.
Dr Wallen is passionate about consumer involvement in research and was honoured with a Churchill Fellowship which enabled her to harness the knowledge and expertise of eminent international research centres respected for their partnership with consumers, and apply the learnings to cerebral palsy research locally. She led research identifying ways to involve children with cerebral palsy and their families as research partners and to evaluate outcomes of consumer involvement.
Dr Wallen is a chief investigator in CP-Achieve, a research program focused on youth and young adults with cerebral palsy. This is a five-year NHMRC-funded Centre for Research Excellence: CP-Achieve – Australian Centre for Health, Independence, Economic Participation and Value Enhanced Care for adolescents and young adults with cerebral palsy.
Dr Elisa Yule is an occupational therapist with extensive experience in mental health and international community development. Her research interests include consumer participation in mental health service delivery and recovery interventions to enhance the participation of people with a lived experience of mental illness. Her recent research projects have also explored the codesign, delivery and evaluation of mental health curriculum with consumers and the impact on student learning. Elisa's research interests also include asset-based approaches to support the participation in community of people experiencing disadvantage. She has experience in qualitative and mixed-methods research.
We're available 9am–5pm AEDT,
Monday to Friday
If you’ve got a question, our AskACU team has you covered. You can search FAQs, text us, email, live chat, call – whatever works for you.