People

Sharon Friel is an ARC Laureate Fellow, Professor of Health Equity and Director of ARCHE | Australian Research Centre for Health Equity at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australian National University. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia, and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Dr Nicholas Frank is a Laureate Research Fellow with the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse in the School of Regulation and Global Governance. Prior to this, he was an Associate Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. Nicholas specializes in the political economy of trade and investment governance. He employs formal theory, econometrics, inferential network approaches, and text-as-data techniques in his research.

Dr Megan Arthur is a Laureate Research Fellow with the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse. She is an interdisciplinary qualitative researcher working at the intersection of social policy and public health. She studies the politics of governance for health and wellbeing at multiple levels, with a particular interest in the social and environmental determinants of health equity, and how these are mediated by political, economic, cultural, and commercial environments.

Giorgia (Gio) is a Laureate PhD candidate at the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse. Her thesis will focus on the role of philanthropy in shaping planetary health equity research priorities. Originally trained as a biomedical scientist, Gio worked with various non-profit organisations focused on global health and sustainability including Health Care Without Harm Europe, Buy Better Food at ICLEI Europe and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.

Roxana is a Laureate PhD candidate at the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse. Her research examines the impact of digitalisation on curbing greenwashing in the Australian and European food sectors. Roxana is an experienced political scientist with a passion for sustainable development. Her focus areas include Circular Economy, resource efficiency, the EU Single Market for Green Products, product life-cycle and Environmental Footprint.

Chelsea Hunnisett is a Laureate PhD Candidate and Government Relations Specialist at the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse. Chelsea's research focuses on planetary health equity metrics within Australia's approach to the wellbeing economy. Chelsea is an experienced policy, advocacy and government relations specialist with expertise in planetary health, food and preventive health policy. Chelsea has held positions at the Climate and Health Alliance, The George Institute for Global Health and the Climate Action Network Australia.

Our Senior Project Officer, Joss has a background in International Development and Environmental Science, she brings experience of Grants Administration and Project Co-ordination in the Public Sector and Not-For-Profits to the Hothouse.

Amy is our Communications Officer, and is also a Research Officer within the ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), working on the NHMRC Ideas Project ‘Evaluating Systems Change for Health Equity: A Case Study of Australia’s COVID-19 Policy Response’, and a member of the Australian Research Centre for Health Equity (ARCHE). Her research interests include governance for healthy, sustainable, and equitable food systems, including the roles of both those traditionally understood as being responsible for governing (e.g., governments), and others (e.g., civil society actors). She is also interested in wellbeing economies and the ways these alternatives could contribute to planetary health equity.

Alan Gamlen is a RegNet Professor. Alan’s book, Human Geopolitics: States, Emigrants and the Rise of Diaspora Institutions (Oxford University Press 2019), won the 2020 Distinguished Book Award for Best Book on Ethnicity and Migration from the International Studies Association.

Dr Aparna Lal is Fellow in the Environment, Climate and Health group at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. Her research focuses on how the physical environment impacts human health and well-being. My projects combine public health surveillance with remote sensing, and land and water quality monitoring data to quantify, monitor and understand the processes that shape disease patterns.

Dr Hunter is the Human Futures Fellow in the College of Health and Medicine and is a physician and cardiologist with a clinical focus on patient-centred care.  Her research interests are in health impacts of the changing climate. She is a Member of the Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solutions, and is the co-host of The Crawford School of Public Policy podcast Policy Forum Pod. 

Ashley Schram is a Braithwaite Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) and Deputy Director of the Australian Research Centre for Health Equity (ARCHE). Her research investigates the actors, structures, and ideas governing public policies that stratify society and shape key systems for human health and health inequities. Focal areas include international trade, investment policy, and food systems. 

Bec Colvin is a social scientist and senior lecturer with the Resources, Environment & Development Group at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy. Bec researches the social and political dimensions of contentious issues associated with climate policy and energy transition. Her research is focused on understanding the complexity of how different people and groups engage with social, policy, and political conflict about climate and energy issues, particularly through the theoretical lens of the social identity approach. She has explored conflict about wind energy, coal seam gas, coal, and climate policy and energy transition more broadly, in settings ranging from the public sphere through to local communities.

Beck Pearse is a sociologist at the ANU School of Sociology and the Fenner School of Environment & Society. Her teaching and research focuses on inequalities and environmental policy. Beck is interested in how people from different walks of life experience environmental change and how environmental policy can contribute to building a fair and ecologically abundant world.

Dr Belinda Townsend is Deputy Director of the Australian Research Centre for Health Equity (ARCHE) and Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. Bel is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the interface between public health, governance, and political economy and is an emerging leader in the field of public health political science.

Christian Downie is an Associate Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. He holds an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship and was previously a Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of New South Wales. Christian’s research focuses on the governance of the energy transition. His latest book is Business Battles in the U.S. Energy Sector: Lessons for a clean energy transition.

Darren is Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean (Research) in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He is a political scientist who researches and writes about organised interests (interest groups, thinks tanks, corporations and lobbyists) and political representation, and the connections between the two.

Hannah joined the ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance as a PhD candidate in late 2021. Prior to starting her research, Hannah spent a decade with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) working on international climate change policy and as a diplomat in Laos. Drawing on these experiences, Hannah’s research focuses on the politics and governance of energy systems transition in Southeast Asia. 

Professor Hilary Bambrick is Director of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. Her research interests are in the health impacts of climate change: how we limit and manage them, such as through early warning, community-led adaptation, and systems resilience.

Jensen Sass is a Braithwaite Fellow in the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), a political sociologist by training he works on problems within contemporary democratic governance, including the regulation of private power and questions around the quality of public discourse.

Dr Lee White is a Research Fellow with the Zero Carbon Energy in the Asia Pacific Grand Challenge program. Her research relates to understanding how systems can be changed to increase clean technology adoption, including understanding policy needs to support a just energy transition. She has published in areas including drivers of residential solar adoption, predictors of intent to adopt electric vehicles, and household response to demand management rates to shift timing of electricity use.

Libby is a PhD candidate who joined RegNet in 2016 to research regulatory regimes affecting women’s food production for infants and young children through breastfeeding.

Her research will investigate the contribution of human milk sharing to infant food security and health policy in Australia, under the supervision of Julie Smith and Sharon Friel.

Professor Mark Howden is Director of the Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions at The Australian National University. He is also a Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and is Chair of the ACT Climate Change Council. Mark works on climate variability, climate change, innovation and adoption issues via both research and science-policy roles. Issues he has addressed include agriculture and food security, the natural resource base, ecosystems and biodiversity, energy, water and urban systems.

Nikolai is a PhD candidate at the ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Nikolai previously worked as a policy advisor at the Australian Climate Change Authority and as an energy economist at the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. 

Associate Professor Sara Bice is Foundation Director, Institute for Infrastructure in Society at the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University. She is Vice Chancellor’s Futures Scheme Senior Fellow for her work on The Next Generation Engagement program, Australia’s largest study into community engagement in infrastructure, to date.

Sotiris Vardoulakis is Professor of Global Environmental Health at the ANU National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. He is the Director of the NHMRC Healthy Environments and Lives (HEAL) National Research Network. His main research interests include climate change and health, air pollution and health, sustainable cities, sustainable transport, exposure assessment, epidemiology, health impact assessment, and environmental public health communication and policy.

Susan K. Sell is a RegNet Professor. Her research focuses on the politics of intellectual property, trade, investment and private power. She has published a number of books, including Private Power, Public Law: the Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights; and Who Governs the Globe?

Will Grant is Associate Professor in Science Communication at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at ANU. Awarded for his public policy and outreach work, Will’s work has focused mostly on the interaction of science, politics and technology. He is co-founder of the researcher employment service PostAc.

Will is regularly heard on Radio National discussing science for Research Filter and Nightlife, as well as podcasting in The Wholesome Show and G’day Sausages, charting in the Australian iTunes top 50.