Academy Fellow

Professor Boydell is a Professor of Mental Health at the Black Dog Institute. She is a health sociologist and qualitative methodologist. She leads the AKT (arts-based knowledge translation) Lab at the Black Dog Institute and is Director of Knowledge Translation for Maridulu Budyari Gumal – Sydney Partnership in Health Education Research and Enterprise (SPHERE), an NHMRC Advanced Research Translational Centre. Her participatory, collaborative program of research uses the arts, broadly defined, in the research creation and dissemination process. She explores the use of art as a knowledge translation strategy - in the creation and dissemination of research - including documentary film, dance, digital storytelling, found poetry, installation art and body mapping. Using these strategies has resulted in increased mental health literacy, decreased stigma and enhanced help seeking. 

Her work has interrogated the theoretical, methodological and ethical challenges of engaging in arts-based knowledge translation, which are described in her recent editorship of a special issue of the Journal of Applied Arts & Health and her edited book Applying body mapping in research: An art-based approach (Routledge 2020). 

She has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. 

Current projects include body mapping with women marginalised by mental illness, disability or refugee status, exploring the experience of anxiety in adolescents using arts-based methods, using photovoice to explore experiences of women with disability, and lived experience co-design in suicide prevention. 

Director, Knowledge Translation, Sydney Partnership for Health Education Research and Enterprise

Founder and Lead, Culture Dose: Art for Wellbeing (virtual arts engagement program, Black Dog Institute & Art Gallery of New South Wales)

Senior Mental Health Advisor, HealthTalk Australia

Mental Health Lead, The Big Anxiety: people + art + science

Co-chair, Arts and Health Network of NSW/ACT

Tom Trauer Research Award for innovation in knowledge translation, The Mental Health Services Learning Network (TheMHS), 2018

WINC Research Award for Knowledge Translation (2018)

Award for Best Consumer Research using design thinking, Society for Mental Health, 2019

1. Boydell, KM (Ed), 2020, Applying body mapping in research: An arts-based method, Taylor and Francis, Routledge Publishers. 
2. Boydell, KM, 2020, The ART of social prescribing: Beyond clinical options, In Beyond the psychology industry: What kind of therapy do we need now? P. Rhodes (ed), Springer. pp. 41-48.
3. Boydell, KM, 2019, The journey to a wider understanding of ways of knowing: Knowledge translation and the arts. LEARNing Landscapes. 12(1): 19-27. 
4. Boydell, KM, Gladstone, BM, Stasiulis, E, Nodin, S, Cheng, C., 2018, Co-producing narratives on access to care in rural communities: Using digital storytelling to foster social inclusion of young people experiencing psychosis. Studies in Social Justice. 11(2): 298-304.5.
5. Boydell, KM, de Jager, A, Ball, J, Curtis, J, Lappin, J, Kalucy, M, Rosenbaum, S, Tewson, A, Vaughan, P, Ward, P, Watkins, A, 2018, Mapping a novel landscape for understanding physical and mental health: Arts-based research with youth experiencing psychosis, Art/Research Int, 3(2), 236-261.