Lived experience research assistant, The University of Melbourne Lula is one of the WEAVERS lived experience panel of co-researchers that are part of the Centre of Research Excellence - Safer Families https://www.saferfamilies.org.au/weavers. In 2022 she co-authored “Lamb, K., Dembele, L., Nina and Fiona, Hegarty, K (2022). A Framework for the ethical co-production of research with victim survivors of intimate partner and sexual violence: Draft for Discussion, University of Melbourne: Australia and World Health Organisation, Switzerland.” and she participates in other WEAVERS projects such as their work with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare research on domestic, family, and sexual violence. Lula is also on the QUT Centre for Justice Gender and Violence Advisory Board, Department of Health Expert Reference Group for Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence, and the National Plan (To End Violence Against Women and Children) Advisory Group. She is one of the co-founders of the Independent Collective of Survivors, and founder of the Accountability Matters Project which seeks to drive collective action to reduce men's use of domestic, family, and sexual violence. Lula is currently Director of Lived Expertise, Government Relations, and Advocacy for the Australian first, Women's Trauma Recovery Centre. Lula also works as a victim survivor lived expertise consultant, including with the Australian National Research Organisation on Women's Safety and is an Ambassador for Bravehearts.
Group Laboratory Manager, Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge I am a molecular biologist who studies the interaction of infectious diseases with human genetics. Our focus is on trying to understand why some individuals get infected with tuberculosis, while others are able to clear the infection. I started my scientific career as a marine biologist, then moved into human genetic analysis of various diseases. When I joined Lalita Ramakrishnan's lab, it was the perfect combination of fish and human immune system biology.
Professor, Microbiology, University of Cambridge Lalita Ramakrishnan is a microbiologist and immunologist who researches the pathogenesis of tuberculosis. She developed the zebrafish as a model to study TB and has made discoveries about how the bacteria thwart the host immune system to prevail. She is also interested in why it takes several months with multiple drugs to treat TB. This is attributed to a phenomenon called drug tolerance. Lalita’s group has identified a mechanism by which TB bacteria become tolerant to multiple drugs. Both areas of their work have led to the discovery of already approved drugs that can be used for TB treatment. Lalita is a practicing physician specializing in infectious diseases.
Senior Researcher, South African Institute of International Affairs Dr Lauren Johnston holds a PhD in Economics from Peking University. She has expertise in and is widely published on the economics and political economy of China-Africa relations, the Belt and Road Initiative and how population ageing impacts China’s economy. Dr Johnston is concurrently an Associate Professor at the China Studies Centre, University of Sydney. She previously worked at the University of Melbourne, Beijing Foreign Studies University, the World Bank, and as an ODI Fellow in the Ministry of Development and Economic Planning of Sierra Leone.
Senior Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne Libby Rumpff is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences and a Principal Investigator in the Quantitative and Applied Ecology group (QAECO) at The University of Melbourne. She is a plant ecologist and environmental decision analyst.
Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences, Edge Hill University Lorraine studied for a degree in Social Policy/Administration at the University of Cardiff in the 1980s because of her interest in social justice and equality. Then, after working in social care with adults and children with learning disabilities in Wales for two years within a city wide innovative ‘normalisation’ project (1984-1986), she undertook a professional qualification and a Master’s degree in Social Work at the University of Birmingham (1986-1988). Following this she worked for approximately four years in child protection and mental health social work in Salford. In 1993/4 Lorraine changed career trajectory to research and higher education and worked as a research assistant on a large-scale health care evaluation project based at Southbank University. In 1994 she was offered a funded research studentship at Huddersfield University and undertook a sociology PhD which explored and analysed the sexuality, sexual abuse and exploitation issues which affected ‘looked after’ children living in residential care settings. Between 1998 and 2000 she worked as a research fellow in the Centre for Applied Childhood Studies within Huddersfield University, managing, coordinating and evaluating a European research project assessing the balance between legal intervention and therapeutic support for sexually abused children in three European countries. In the early 2000s (2000-2003) Lorraine worked as lecturer/senior lecturer in Sociology at Sheffield Hallam University. From 2003 to 2013 she was a lecturer in social work at the University of Manchester and between 2013 and 2016 she was employed as an assistant professor in Social Work at the University of Nottingham. In 2017 she took up a post as senior lecturer in social sciences here at Edge Hill University, returning to her sociological and social policy roots. Lorraine is therefore a very experienced cross-disciplinary academic, having been in higher education for well over twenty years and having taught, researched and published on many different topics over this time. Her key research interests are sociology of age and the life course, sociology of the body, and the sociology of childhood, in particular children in difficult circumstances, ‘looked after’ children and gender, sexuality, sexual abuse and children. Lorraine also acted as an expert academic witness on a Dutch governmental committee in 2013 which was charged with investigating the sexual abuse of children in residential care in Netherlands between 1945 and 2010. Lorraine has done much undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in sociology, social policy and social work. She is an enthusiastic, imaginative and diligent lecturer, committed to supporting her students reach their full potential. Furthermore, she has acted as an external assessor and validator on MA programmes in other universities. She has also internally and externally examined and supervised a number of successful sociology and social work PhD students. She would welcome discussions with potential PhD applicants who feel they could benefit from her supervision and she is skilled in qualitative research, particularly sensitive topic research.
