Affiliation: Monash University
Discipline: Health Sciences
Year elected: 2023
How would you describe your work at a dinner party?
I help systems put evidence into action with communities, especially those most impacted by disadvantage, by centring lived experience and moving beyond Western, Eurocentric, and colonised assumptions to achieve fair and equitable health and wellbeing across the lifespan.
What role do the social sciences play in your work?
The social sciences help me interrogate power, culture, and context; integrate diverse epistemologies; and design implementation strategies that are relational, trauma-informed, community led, and equitable – not hierarchical.
What question or issue, in your field, keeps you awake at night?
Are we still imposing top-down models that miss context, or are we genuinely shifting power (funding, decision rights, and measures of success) to communities so interventions reach those who need them most and reduce inequities at scale?
What should your field of study be doing more of right now?
We need to co-design and co-govern implementation with consumers and communities (lived experience experts), prioritising diverse knowledge systems so that scaling what works also closes gaps rather than reproducing and exacerbating them.
Where is your ‘happy’ place?
Greece is my happy place. It’s a deep pull grounded in being the child of migrant parents and the first in my family to finish primary school. Greece reminds me why belonging, dignity, opportunity, fairness and equity matter in everything I do.