Professor Phoebe Bailey is Acting Head of Discipline, Psychology, leading the establishment and roll‑out (2024–2027) of UTS’s first undergraduate psychology programs.

She came to UTS in late 2021 after an early career in investment banking followed by a decade at Western Sydney University. At Western Sydney she was Director of Academic Programs in Psychology, and briefly, Acting Deputy Dean (Academic), School of Social Sciences and Psychology.

Phoebe came to UTS to take charge of building the first graduate diploma and undergraduate psychology programs ever to be offered at UTS, including the team and infrastructure to support these programs.

The online graduate diplomas were launched in October 2022, followed by debut of the undergraduate programs on campus in 2024.

Phoebe combines this governance work with her own research, and an Australian Research Council Discovery Project looking at decisional isolation among solo agers in Australia. This follows two earlier ARC Discovery Projects looking at how older Australians take advice, and the role of trust in the financial exploitation of older adults.

Phoebe has published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and five book chapters. She is Consulting Editor at Psychology and Aging and The Journals of Gerontology: Psychology Sciences, and was Associate Editor at Cognition and Emotion for four years.

Prizes include the UTS Faculty of Health Dean's Academic Excellence Awards for Leadership (Highly Commended) and for Social Equity and Justice (awarded to the UTS Online Psychology team); Western Sydney University School of Social Sciences and Psychology Excellence in PhD Supervision Award (nominated by students); Western Sydney VC’s Excellence as an Early Career Researcher Award (Highly Commended); The UNSW U Committee Award for Research Excellence in Science for submission of the best PhD thesis across the 10 Schools in the Faculty of Science at UNSW; Australian Psychological Society Excellent PhD Award.

Catherine Barrett is a clinical education–focused academic, with clinical experience across a range of settings and client populations spanning the lifespan. Catherine has extensive experience as a clinical educator, having supported student learning both within universities and across diverse clinical placement sites.

Catherine currently works as a clinical facilitator within the UTS on-campus clinic, contributing to high-quality learning experiences, and collaborating with other clinical facilitators and academics.

In addition, Catherine provides lectures about clinical practice, where she is involved in the development of students’ clinical competencies.

Dr Lucy Bryant is a Senior Lecturer in Speech Pathology at UTS, and a certified practising speech pathologist. She has over a decade of experience working with children and adults across community, private practice and university clinics, supporting them to develop their communication. Her passion grew from a belief that everyone should have access to the basic human right of communication, and all that comes with it in terms of social, educational, and workplace opportunities. She has a particular interest in langugae development and rehabilitation across the lifespan, and how people process, understand, and express meaning. Her work has a significant focus on technology and the opportunities for communication access and inclusion that come from new and evolving communication and information technologies. 

Lucy completed her PhD at the University of Newcastle, Australia (July 2018), examining the implementation of discourse (language sample) analysis in clinical practice for people with aphasia following stroke. In her clinical practice and research, she has focused on how we understand and formulate messages and meaning in the brain, especially after brain injury, stroke or other disability. Her work in this space helped to launch the international collaboration Focusing on the Quality of Spoken Discourse in Aphasia (FOQUS Aphasia) with colleagues in the USA and UK.

Lucy has a strong clinical and research interest in the role of technology in society and communication, and is exploring developments in technology, particularly Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Her work with technology teams at UTS and through industry has led to innovative new applications to support language learning, recovery, and access for people with communication disability across the lifespan. Lucy is the Theme Lead for Professional Practice and Education in the UTS INSIGHT Digital Health Collaborative. Her role relates to collaborative approaches to upskilling health students and professionals in the effective use of technology in their roles, to benefit all Australians who access the health system.

Her current work is split between teaching, research and working in the speech pathology clinic at UTS that gives free treatment to the public and provides students with clinical experience. Lucy’s intersecting roles across these domains give her the unique opportunity to conduct clinically meaningful research and educate the next generation of speech pathologists to support language learning, and use technology in ways that will improve access to communication.

I am a Senior Clinical Psychologist with nearly 20 years of clinical experience. I worked in the public sector for 18 years working with the LGBTQ+ community in the context of HIV and sexual health, and currently operate a clinical practice in the Sydney CBD. I also teach and supervise clinical and research students in the Master of Clinical Psychology in the Graduate School of Health at the University of Technology Sydney.

My passion is the improvement of mental health and quality of life for marginalised and vulnerable populations/communities, through both my clinical work and translational research projects. I strongly advocate bringing together clinical practice and translational research, as I believe evidence should inform clinical practice and practice should guide the evidence-base. During my time in NSW Health, I chaired a committee to strengthen the research capacity of psychologists who are employed clinically in South East Sydney LHD, and was a senior member of staff involved in service redesign projects.

In 2019, I was awarded a Health Education and Training Institute (HETI) Mental Health Research Award to facilitate the completion of my PhD.

Saoirse is a cognitive psychologist who investigates how people think and form beliefs, especially in determining which information to trust. Her primary focus is on how individuals use cues like the reliability of the source, the frequency of exposure to information, and the level of agreement or disagreement among different sources. She examines how these factors influence individuals' perceptions of the intentions and expertise of information sources, as well as how they contribute to the acceptance of claims made by those sources.

To explore these ideas, she conducts experiments to examine how indicators of credibility and agreement impact decision-making in real-world contexts. Her findings are crucial for understanding misinformation, especially in legal, health, and political contexts. They also aid in developing strategies to mitigate the effects of misinformation.

Originally from the UK, Saoirse earned her PhD from City, University of London, in 2018. Her doctoral research focused on why people continue to believe misinformation even after it has been corrected. After completing her PhD, she worked at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney, where she explored how beliefs about the generation of evidence affect our perceptions of information. She has also been exploring the prevalence and impact of misleading information related to sexual and reproductive health.

Deb Mitchison is a clinical psychologist, researcher and educator. She has specialised in eating disorders since 2009. According to ScholarGPS, Deb is the #14 ranked eating disorder scholar globally, and has been named an inaugural Highly Ranked Scholar, indicating that she is in the top 0.05% of researchers worldwide across fields on account of her productivity and citations of her work. Deb's research focuses on understanding the prevalence, distribution, determinants, and health service use associated with eating disorders and related concerns. Primary methodological approaches that she employs includes population-based cohort studies, registry-based research, and program evaluations. Noteworthy research programs Deb has led/is leading include:

• The TrEAT Registry, which is the first registry for community-based eating disorder treatment registered on the Australian Register of Clinical Registries (ACSQHC-ARCR-279). This registry is a partnership with clinical leaders across eating disorder speciality clinics in Australia and New Zealand. Information collected in the registry is fed back to clinicians and services to support treatment monitoring, and the de-identified database is used by researchers. 

• The EveryBODY Study, a cohort study investigating eating disorders and associated risk factors among 5000 NSW adolescents over ther period 2017-2020. This longitudinal dataset has been used in 30 publications to date, including studies that have documented the prevalence of diverse eating disorders and muscle dysmorphia, and examined risk factors for developing eating disorders such as social media use and social fears.       

Dr Julia Dray is a Lecturer in Speech Pathology, and Project Manager on the NurtureNextGen project in Genetic Counselling at UTS. Dr Dray’s prior postdoctoral roles focussed on lived experience research in mental health and evaluations of complex implementation science based approaches to improve health and mental health care for reduction of modifiable health risk behaviours and associated chronic disease.

Dr Dray is passionate about enabling people to embed lived-experience in research; recognise their strengths and available wider community protective factors; to develop and maintain positive mental health, development, and life trajectories; breaking disadvantage, and; research and teaching relating to effective mental health and health promotion, prevention and behaviour change initiatives to improve the health of local communities.

Dr Dray completed her PhD, on resilience and mental health problems in children and adolescents. This work achieved international impact and recognition, cited in multiple policies and guidelines including by the World Health Organisation and The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE, UK). Testament to significance of findings to the field Dr Dray was also invited as a successful recipient of a DJC Fellowship to present at the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions World Congress (IACAPAP, Calgary, Canada). As demonstration of ongoing resulting global collaborations Dr Dray has been a co-author on publications including in The Lancet Psychiatry with a team of ECRs from 14 countries. Over half of Dr Dray’s other publications cover various review and critical appraisal studies including as a co-author on a systematic review forming the WHO Child Health Workers (CHW) Review Project.

Dr Dray has published over 65 peer review articles, reviews, conference abstracts and commissioned reports. She has obtained over half a million dollars in research funding to date, most recently through a Hunter Medical Research Institute, ECR Grant for Cancer Research (as CIB), titled: Implementation of person centred cancer preventive care in mental health settings: perspectives of consumers and peer-workers, and a Health Foundation Vanguard Grant (as CIC), titled: Evaluating the feasibility and efficacy of PhysiCards: a pilot randomised controlled trial of a novel tool to assist mental health consumers identify and seek care for cardiovascular (and other) physical health concerns.

Dr Dray has demonstrated significant service and leadership including as a reviewer for over 19 peer review journals, as Co-President of the NSW Branch of the Australian Health Promotion Association (AHPA; 2018-2019), and as Lead Guest Editor on a Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health on Improving the Physical Health of People with a Mental Illness (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/special_issues/Improving_Physical).

Dr Dray envisions her current and future role as an early career researcher in Australia developing into: continued high-standard, cross disciplinary research and teaching; effective collaboration with national, international, government, nongovernment and community partners; the development, implementation, evaluation, transparent dissemination and quality translation of evidence-based research findings, and; a positive influence on related policy.

Naomi Folder is a Research Associate within the Graduate School of Health at University of Technology Sydney, within the 'Assess for Success' Project funded by a NHMRC Ideas Grant, led by Professor Deborah Hersh (Curtin University). This project aims to improve communication during assessment and feedback processes between people with stroke or traumatic brain injury and clinicians. She also works casually as a speech pathologist in the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District. 

Naomi has recently submitted her PhD which worked to modify an existing communication partner training program for traumatic brain injury, “Convers-ABI-lity”, and tailor this program to dementia through co-creation with people living with dementia and their families.

She is a passionate advocate for communication intervention and support for all people living with dementia, and for the important role of speech pathology in improving social connection, conversation, and quality of life.

I have joined the Graduate School of Health at UTS as Head of Discipline, Genetic Counselling in 2022.

Prior to moving to UTS, I was a Senior Genetic Counsellor in several large genetic services in metropolitan Sydney and recently worked as a Research Genetic Counsellor with Mackenzie's Mission. I have recently completed a PhD in the responsible implementation of reproductive genetic carrier screening exploring stakeholder views on inclusion of genes associated with non-syndromic hearing loss in screening.

I’ve held leadership roles in the Australasian Society of Genetic Counsellors and the NSW Genetic Counsellor Advisory Board with NSW Health, with a particular focus on defining the scope of practice of genetic counsellors.

Dr Gregory is a speech pathologist with a special research and clinical interest in Functional Neurological Disorders (FND) and gender affirming voice training. She gained her PhD in Neurophysiology in 2002 from Imperial College London. Her achievements in research were recognised in receiving sponsorship in 2004 by Deutsche Bank, Australia, as an "up and coming" young scientist and being awarded "Australian Biophysicist of the Year" by the Australian Biophysical Society in 2006.

A previous ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship holder, Catherine changed careers, completing a Master of Speech Pathology with 1st class honours in 2011. Since then she has worked as a clinical speech pathologist and clinical educator in both private practice and in several hospitals across New South Wales, providing evidence-based assessment and management of voice, swallowing, and communication to outpatients, acute inpatients and nursing homes. She is currently a lecturer and clinical educator at the University of Technology Sydney where she is passionate about the student learning experience. Her current research includes the use of VR in gender affirming voice training and investigating student experiences of providing gender affirming voice training while on clinical placements.

On the weekend, Cath runs her own private speech pathology practice specialising in functional communication disorders and gender affirming voice and communication.

Dr Monique Hines is a skilled health services researcher and speech pathologist with expertise in applying qualitative research methods to explore complex health issues across a range of fields, including disability and accessibility, mental health, rehabilitation, telehealth and virtual health, rural and remote health, and workforce issues.

She is currently working as a casual research assistant on the MRFF‑funded project M‑MAT Tele: Maximising Aphasia Treatment and Recovery across Australia through Innovative Group Telerehabilitation (Grant MRF2032833). Her role focuses on supporting interviews and focus groups of participants and clinicians to understand the Multimodal Aphasia Therapy telehealth intervention to support implementation and translation of outcomes.