Our Team
Professor Stuart Kinner
Available for supervision at Honours, Masters and PhD level.
Professor Stuart Kinner is the Head of the Justice Health Unit in the Centre for Health Equity. He also holds academic appointments at Murdoch Children's Research Institute, University of Queensland, Monash University, Griffith University, and the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement.
Stuart’s research focusses on the health of marginalised and justice-involved people. He is experienced in longitudinal studies, data linkage, randomised controlled trials, program evaluation and policy analysis, systematic review and meta-analysis. He has produced >230 publications including 133 peer-reviewed papers (101 since 2012), and attracted >$20 million in research and consulting funds, mostly from nationally competitive schemes. He regularly presents by invitation at national and international meetings.
Stuart chairs the National Youth Justice Health Advisory Group, co-convenes the Justice Health Special Interest Group in the Public Health Association of Australia, sits on the Board of Directors and Co-Chairs the Research Committee in the Academic Consortium on Criminal Justice Health, serves on the Steering Committee for the Worldwide Prison Health Research & Engagement Network, leads the Health Theme in the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty, and since 2005 has served on Australia’s National Prisoner Health Information Committee, guiding the evolution of a world-first surveillance system for prisoner and ex-prisoner health.
Dr Rohan Borschmann
Available for supervision at Honours, Masters and PhD level.
Dr Rohan Borschmann is a Senior Research Fellow and psychologist in the Justice Health Unit. A former prison psychologist and probation officer, he completed his clinical doctorate in psychology in 2007 (QLD) and his PhD in psychiatry in 2014 (King's College London, UK). Rohan's research focuses on the mental health of adolescents and marginalised young people in Australia, with particular expertise in self-harm, substance use and antisocial behaviour during the teenage years. He has secured more than $11 million in competitive funding, including a 4-year Early Career Fellowship from Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) to examine suicide and self-harm in young justice-involved populations and other marginalised groups.
In addition to his research activities, Rohan is a registered psychologist with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). During the completion of his doctoral program he worked clinically with young people in community mental health settings, substance misuse treatment settings and with the Department of Corrective Services in Queensland, in both community and custodial settings. Additionally, he worked as a psychologist at Lotus Glen Correction Centre (LGCC) in Far North Queensland (Australia’s most northerly prison), where >70% of prisoners identify as Indigenous.
Rohan holds honorary appointments in the Centre for Adolescent Health (Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Melbourne), the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (King’s College London), and the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences (University of Melbourne).
Dr Jesse Young
Available for supervision at Honours and Masters level.
Dr Jesse Young is Research Fellow in the Justice Health Unit. He holds Adjunct appointments in the School of Population and Global Health at The University of Western Australia and the National Drug Research Institute at Curtin University. Specialising in psychiatric epidemiology and data linkage methodology, his research interests include mental health, intellectual disability, and justice health. He is an active member of the International ADHD and Substance Use Disorder Research Group and the Society for Mental Health Research.
Louise Southalan
Louise Southalan has a background in law and policy. Her passion is finding ways to enable good evidence to usefully assist decision makers in justice systems, and on seeking to improve the health and wellbeing of people involved in detention settings. Within the Justice Health Unit Louise is engaged in several national and international projects to strengthen the evidence base and promote evidence-based decision making on health issues in prison and detention settings. She is a Churchill Fellow, and completed her report in 2020 on strategies for national agencies to improve state prison mental health systems and services.
Louise works for the Western Australian Department of Justice, working on justice health reform projects. She is a lawyer who previously practised in criminal law, worked for seven years commissioning prison mental health services and developing forensic policy in the Western Australian Mental Health Commission, and also worked for Australian Red Cross monitoring conditions in immigration detention centres. She is a steering committee member of WEPHREN, the Worldwide Prison Health Research and Engagement Network. She holds a law degree and masters degrees in International Development and in Mental Health Policy and Services, and she is a board member of HepatitisWA.
Dr Kathryn Snow
Available for supervision at Honours and Masters level.
Dr Kathryn Snow is an epidemiologist who has worked with the Justice Health Unit since 2013. Her research uses routine data to understand the health needs of vulnerable populations, with a particular focus on communicable diseases and drug-related harms. She has a keen interest in methodological issues in public health research, and in improving the quality of routinely collected health data.
Claire Keen
Claire Keen recently graduated from a Master of Public Health at the University of Melbourne, where she completed a research project looking at non-fatal overdose after people leave prison. Claire previously completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in sociology and worked in outdoor education. Claire is passionate about health equity and addressing the health needs of people who are often ignored. In her spare time, she likes to escape the city and go hiking and climbing.
Annie Carter
Annie is an early career researcher with research experience across projects at health research organisations in Darwin and Melbourne. Annie undertook her Master of Public Health at the University of Melbourne with a specialisation in Health Economics and Economic Evaluation. Annie is passionate about improving the health of disadvantaged and vulnerable populations in Australia and especially those who come into contact with the criminal justice system.
Lindsay Pearce
Lindsay Pearce is a Research Fellow with the Justice Health Unit. She completed her Master of Public Health at the University of British Columbia and an undergraduate degree in Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Lindsay’s research and work has focused on the health and health care experiences of vulnerable populations including people who use drugs, people living with HIV and Hepatitis C, and incarcerated populations. She is interested in the application of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to elucidate the stories of these populations and drive evidence-informed health system change.
Dr Lucas Calais Ferreira
Dr Lucas Ferreira is a Research Fellow in the Justice Health Unit (Centre for Health Equity), and the Breast Cancer and Twins Research Australia units (Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics) in the Melbourne School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne. He focuses on traditional and genetic epidemiology to research risk factors for physical, mental and social outcomes in the population. Lucas has co-created the Brazilian Twin Registry and led collaborative efforts within the International Network of Twin Registries. He has conducted and facilitated several initiatives aimed at knowledge translation and stakeholder engagement in scientific research.
Emma Thomas
Emma Thomas holds an Honorary appointment with the Justice Health Unit. She is a doctoral student in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her thesis work has centred on developing Bayesian regression techniques for high-dimensional multi-outcome problems. Emma was a research assistant with the Justice Health Unit from 2013 to 2015 and joined again as an honorary in 2019. In this role, she is studying the association between psychological distress and pharmaceutical prescriptions following prison release using statistical methods developed during her PhD.