Mental Health Research Grants

Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor Tracey Wade has worked as a clinician and researcher in mental health for over 30 years. She is the director of the Flinders University Services for Eating Disorders. She has cowritten 3 books on cognitive behaviour therapy for eating disorders and perfectionism and has over 300 publications in peer reviewed journals. In 2015 she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Professor Caroline Donovan is a Clinical Psychologist and Professor within the School of Applied Psychology and the Centre for Mental Health at Griffith University. She has received over $12 million worth of funding throughout her career and has published 14 book chapters and 118 peer reviewed journal articles. Her research philosophy centres around a strong belief in early intervention, with research interests centering around child and youth sleep and anxiety problems.

Dr Lara Farrell is a Clinical Psychologist and Professor in the School of Applied Psychology, and Director of the Griffith Centre for Mental Health at Griffith University. Her program of research focusses on improving access to evidence-based treatments for young people with phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) via novel modalities of care. She has published over 140 papers, serves as Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, and is a regular panel member for NHMRC and MRFF. Dr Farrell leads the “OCD Busters” and “Child Phobia” treatment research programs and has secured major funding from ARC, NHMRC, Rotary Health, NIMH, Foundation for Children and MRFF

Dr Lucy Tully is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Supervising Psychologist in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney. She has over 20 years of clinical and research experience, with expertise in child mental health, father engagement, and evidence-based parenting and family interventions. She also she works clinically as a psychologist delivering evidence-based intervention to families of children with emotional and behavioural problems at the Child Behaviour Research Clinic (CBRC) at the University of Sydney.

Dr Alice Norton is a Senior Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist at The University of Sydney. She has extensive experience in research and clinical practice, with a focus on understanding and treating anxiety and trauma-related difficulties. Alice’s work explores how early relationships and experiences shape mental health and how therapy can address these patterns. She is passionate about developing practical, evidence-based strategies that strengthen emotional wellbeing from the earliest stages of life.

Associate Professor Amy Dawel is a clinical and cognitive psychologist at The Australian National University, where she leads the ANU Emotions and Faces Lab. Her research program addresses emerging threats from synthetic media, investigating how people detect and respond to deepfakes and AI-generated personas. In this Australian Rotary Health project, she focuses on how interactions with AI chatbots influence preteens’ social development, wellbeing, and mental health, developing guidance and practical tools for managing these experiences safely.

Professor Alison Calear is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership-II Fellow and Co-Head of the Centre for Mental Health Research at the Australian National University. Her research is focused on youth mental health, eHealth and the prevention and early intervention of anxiety, depression, suicide and self-harm. She is also interested in the promotion of help-seeking behaviour and the role of literacy and stigma in the help-seeking process. Most recently, her research has included the evaluation of an emotion literacy program in ACT primary schools with children aged 7-10 years and a trial assessing the effectiveness of a web-based resource to support parents to better recognise and respond to psychological distress or suicide risk in their child.

Dr Charlene Holt is a Senior Research Fellow at the Parent-Infant Research Institute (PIRI) and a psychologist. She has 20 years of experience in developing and evaluating programs that support parents and strengthen the relationship between mothers and their babies following postnatal depression. Her work has also focused on improving treatment for antenatal, postnatal, and paternal depression, with a particular interest in using digital programs to make help more accessible for families.

Professor Philip Morgan (https://www.newcastle.edu.au/profile/philip-morgan) is co-director of the Global Sport and Movement Collaborative at the University of Newcastle. He has led the development of globally recognised family well-being programs with a distinctive focus on men and fathers. His flagship programs include ‘Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids’; Daughters and Dads Active and Empowered; Healthy Youngsters, Healthy Dads; SHED-IT, and Workplace POWER. These innovative programs have attracted strong community, media, and industry engagement and are grounded in community collaboration.

Marie Yap is an Associate Professor at Monash University and founder of the award-winning Parenting Strategies Program, which translates research evidence into actionable parenting guidelines that underpin individually-tailored online parenting interventions to prevent and reduce the impact of MH problems in children and adolescents.

On average, the parenting guidelines are downloaded >10,000 times a month, and are cited or have formed the basis for online parenting resources in over 20 countries, including Beyond Blue’s Healthy Families website.