Our people
Leadership Team
Professor Alex Broom, Director
Professor Alex Broom is Director of the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies and established the Centre in 2020.
He is a Professor of Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney.
His approach to research is very much articulated by the principles of the Centre – that in order to solve our most challenging problems of today and tomorrow, we must think in genuinely multidimensional ways. For example, through connecting what is happening at the smallest of scales (i.e. the microbe) to what is happening at the largest (i.e. planetary).
Alex’s ambition is to challenge the very nature of ‘illness’ and ‘wellness’ as they are currently understood – often disease-centred or individually-focused – and to mobilise such insights to foster opportunities for health and wellbeing across people, place and context.
In addition to directing the Centre, Alex co-leads the ‘Politics and Economies of Health and Wellbeing’, 'Health/Care Across Time Place and Scale' and ‘The Social Life of Food and Nourishment’ research themes.
Dr Katherine Kenny, Deputy Director
Dr Katherine Kenny is Deputy-Director of the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies and co-leads the ‘Health/Care Across Time, Place and Scale’ and 'The Social Life of Food and Nourishment' research themes.
She is also a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney, and Australian Research Council Discovery Early Researcher Award (DECRA) recipient.
In her research, Katherine brings together cutting-edge social theory and innovative qualitative methods to develop new ways of understanding, and addressing, some of the key health challenges that we face as individuals, societies, and as a global community.
From how we understand emerging global health threats, to what we go through when we receive a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness, Katherine pays careful attention to people’s day-to-day subjective and socially situated experiences of health, illness and care.
Her aim is to develop empirically grounded and forward-thinking implications for how we can do better for our collective and societal health, now and into the future.
Associate Professor Nadine Ehlers, Deputy Director
Associate Professor Nadine Ehlers is Deputy-Director of the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies and co-leads the ‘Race, Ethnicity, and Biohumanities’ research theme.
She teaches in the Discipline of Sociology and Social Policy in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney.
Nadine's research is centrally concerned with exploring how biomedicine can operate as a form of governance—of populations and individuals—along racial, gendered, and class lines.
In her collaborative work with geographers, anthropologists, and global health and health policy scholars, she is particularly interested in examining race-based biomedical targeting technologies and various ways that biomedical ideas of race are mobilised both within and beyond the lab or clinic.
Her research is underscored by a commitment to the pursuit of health justice and equitable biofutures.
Professor Lisa Adkins, Dean Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and Theme Leader
Professor Lisa Adkins is is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney
Her innovative sociological approach to restructuring labour, class, money and time, aims to advance new understandings of the employment crisis, and articulate the interconnections between work, unemployment, under-employment and inequality, including health inequalities.
She co-leads the ‘Politics and Economies of Health and Wellbeing’ theme at the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies alongside Director Alex Broom.
Lisa's research portfolio spans economic sociology, social and cultural theory and feminist theory, with her recent research into the ‘assetisation’ of work revealing the ways in which employment status operates as a key decider and distributor of life chances, including those related to health and wellbeing.
Lisa's latest book, The Asset Economy (co-authored with Melinda Cooper and Martijn Konings), was published by Polity Press in 2020.
Researchers
Dr Michelle Peterie - ARC DECRA Fellow, Robinson Fellow & Theme Leader
Dr Leah Williams Veazey - ARC DECRA Fellow and Theme Leader
Dr Jianni Tien - Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Roberta Pala - Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Juliet Bennett - Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Shiva Chandra - Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Stephanie Raymond - Centre Manager
Dr Jennifer Hagedorn - Research Associate
Dr Laura Vidal - Research Assistant
Isabella Kristo - Research Assistant
Nadeen Madkour - Research Assistant
Imogen Harper - PhD candidate & Research Assistant
Geoffrey Brown - PhD candidate
Morag Kelly - PhD candidate
Research Theme Leaders
Professor Lisa Adkins - Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at The University of Sydney
Professor Danielle Celermajer - Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, Department of Sociology and Criminology, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Sydney
Professor Paul Griffiths - ARC Laureate Fellow, Professor of Philosophy and Domain Leader for Society and Environment, Charles Perkins Centre. School of Humanities & Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Social Science, The University of Sydney
Associate Professor Myra Hamilton - Principal Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research, Work and Organisational Studies, The University of Sydney Business School
Professor Anthony Ryan Hatch - Professor of Science in Society at Wesleyan University & William Allan Neilson Professor at Smith College, Connecticut, USA
Associate Professor Sukhmani Khorana is a Scientia Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, School of the Arts and Media.
Professor Amade M’charek - Professor of Anthropology of Science, Department of Anthropology, The University of Amsterdam
Professor Barbara Prainsack - Department of Political Science, the University of Vienna
Professor Anne Pollock - Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Department of Global Health & Social Medicine, King’s College London
Professor Gaby Ramia - Professor of Policy and Society, Department of Government and International Relations, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Sydney
Professor David Raubenheimer - Professor of Nutritional Ecology, Leonard P Ullmann Chair in Nutritional Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney
Honorary Professors
Professor Assa Doron (School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University)
Professor Greg Marston (School of Social Science, The University of Queensland)
Professor Barbara Prainsack (Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna)
Professor Marsha Rosengarten (Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths University of London)
Professor Aksel Tjora (Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Key Centre Partners and Partner Investigators
- Dr Barbara Barbosa Neves - Monash University
- Associate Professor Jennifer Broom - Clinical Implementation Lead, Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service, QLD
- Professor Clare Chandler - London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
- Associate Professor Mahati Chittem - IIT Hyderabad
- Dr Keat Choong - Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service, QLD
- Associate Professor Nelson Filice de Barros - University of Campinas
- Dr Nicolas Fortané - Paris-Dauphine University
- Dr Nazrul Islam - Beijing Normal University, Hong Kong Baptist University, United International College
- Dr Malinda Itchins - Royal North Shore Hospital, NSW
- Professor Mustafa Khasraw - Duke University
- Dr Claas Kirchhelle - University College Dublin
- Professor Shiloh Krupar - Georgetown University
- Associate Professor Zarnie Lwin - Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, QLD
- Professor John Oliffe - University of British Columbia
- Dr Kristen Overton - Prince of Wales Hospital, NSW
- Associate Professor Jeffrey Post - Prince of Wales Hospital, NSW
- Professor Damien Ridge - University of Westminster
- Professor Ayo Wahlberg - University of Copenhagen
- Associate Professor David Wyld - Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, QLD
Centre Partner Organisations
Australian Universities
- The University of Sydney
- The Australian National University
- University of New South Wales
- University of Queensland
- Monash University
- Deakin University
- University of the Sunshine Coast
- University of Tasmania
- Western Sydney University
International Universities
- University of Vienna
- Oxford University
- Duke University
- London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
- IIT Hyderabad, India
- Georgetown University
- Wesleyan University
- University of Amsterdam
- Paris-Dauphine University
- University of Campinas, Brazil
- Beijing Normal University, Hong Kong Baptist University, United International College, China
- University of British Columbia, Canada
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- Goldsmiths University of London
Australian Hospitals
- Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service
- Prince of Wales Hospital
- Prince Charles Hospital
- Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital
- St George Hospital
- Liverpool Hospital
- Multicultural Health Communication Service
- Royal North Shore Hospital