Member Profiles
Our Centre has 80 members, and is rapidly growing. Profiles of many of these members can be found below, and we will be continuing to build this database over time.
The Centre is led by a Director and Deputy Director, and governed by a steering committee, comprised of Otago staff from a variety of divisions and academic backgrounds. We also have an international advisory committee.
Tony Zaharic (Steering Committee)
Tony Zaharic is a biochemist with an outstanding record in teaching and a strong record in educational research. He is the ELM Director leads the development and delivery of the Early Learning in Medicine (Years 2-3) stage of the MB ChB curriculum, at the University of Otago. He has been involved with ELM since 2011 and has also served as Associate Dean, Medical Admissions, for the Division of Health Sciences.
Cassie Withey-Rila
(Steering Committee)
Cassie Withey-Rila (they/them) began conducting transgender health research during their Master’s of Public Health (University of Otago), and has continued that work for the School of Social Sciences and Otago Medical School. As an immigrant of European ancestry who is always learning, Cassie works to build community within transgender, queer, and disability justice spaces, striving to do so with an anti-racist and anti-colonist lens.
Susan Wardell
(Director)
Dr Susan Wardell is a medical anthropologist and communication scholar, with interests in health and wellbeing, mental health, care, moral emotion, and digital sociality. She works as a Senior Lecturer in the Social Anthropology Programme at the University of Otago, as well as Director of the new Centre for Medical Humanities.
Some of her previous research projects have focused on medical crowdfunding in Aotearoa NZ, on ways of framing climate distress, on advertising of anti-depressants to GPs, and on burnout among youth workers.
Susan's work also regularly engages with creative methods of research and storytelling. She is widely awarded for creative writing (including poetry, essay, flash fiction, and children's writing) and also works with visual, multimodal, and performance arts.
Susan (she/her) is Pākehā, and grew up in Ōtepoti Dunedin.
Maebh Long (Deputy-Director)
Professor Maebh Long is the Eamon Cleary Chair of Irish Studies and Deputy Director of the Centre for Medical Humanities at the University of Otago
Her commitments to the medical humanities have involved a Marsden-funded project exploring the social and literary history of immunity in Ireland, Britain, New Zealand and Australia, as well as research on pandemic responses in literature and on social media.
Other publications include Assembling Flann O’Brien (2014), The Collected Letters of Flann O’Brien (2018), New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific (2019) and The Rise of Pacific Literature: Decolonization, Radical Campuses and Modernism (2024)
Christina Ergler
(Steering Committee)
My research lies at the cross-roads of geography, sociology and public health in the minority and majority world. I focus on the relationships between wellbeing, place and lived everyday experiences. My work contributes to a more just and sustainable world by alerting stakeholders and communities to the socio-spatial, structural and experiential dimensions of health and wellbeing. The “Geographies of Health and Wellbeing” are an important and growing area well linked to many job opportunities and attracts people who are interested in making the world a better place through the work they do.
Julia Wilson
(Steering Committee)
Julia comes from a science background, with current research interests relating to the use of te reo Māori outside of traditional domains, especially in the tertiary environment. Having worked for a number of years to deliver humanities and Te Ao Māori content as part of a first year Health Science course, Julia is also workign to develop resources to support health science staff to work with Te Reo Māori
Katherine Hall
(Steering Committee)
Katherien holds degrees in immunology (BScMed), medicine and surgery (MBBS), bioethics (PhD) and classics (BA). She is a general practice specialist (FRNZCGP) currently working in urgent care medicine as well as a Senior Lecturer in Primary Care at Otago University. Her research interests include ancient medical history, bioethics, decision-making and uncertainty, and general practice/family medicine. She is trained in quantitative, mixed-methods and qualitative methods, preferring to work in the latter two.
Suzanne Little
(Steering Committee)
Associate Professor Suzanne Little lectures in Theatre Studies, and is director of the interdisciplinary 'Performance of the Real' University of Otago Research Theme. She has qualifications and experience in the visual arts and film and has worked also as an actor, director and production designer. She serves on a number of national boards, including the Theatre in Health Education Trust which specialises in using applied theatre to deliver sexual health programmes to schools throughout Aotearoa.
Jessica Young
Jessica Young (PhD) (she/her) is a sociologist and senior research fellow at Victoria University of Wellington, and an adjunct in the Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology. Since the End of Life Choice Bill was introduced in New Zealand, Dr Young has been building a programme of research to investigate multiple facets of assisted dying. She leads and contributes to several projects on assisted dying, most recently ‘Exploring the early experiences of the assisted dying service in Aotearoa’, funded by the Health Research Council.
Annemarie Jutel
Annemarie is a critical diagnosis scholar, whose ground-breaking work in the sociology of diagnosis focuses on how medical classification interacts with social and cultural interests. She is the author of "Putting a Name to it: Diagnosis in Contemporary Society," "Diagnosis; Truths and Tales," and "The Sociology of Diagnosis: A Brief Guide." She has recently published her first graphic novel, "The Tear Bottle", and is working on a graphic explainer on migraine.
Rose Palethorpe
Ross Palethorpe (he/him) is a counsellor based in North Otago. He provides long-term trauma therapy, suicide bereavement counselling, and brief intervention support both in-person and remotely across the motu for adults and older adolescents. He is a Te Whatu Ora-accredited member of the NZAC.
Before entering private practice, Ross worked in secondary education for almost two decades, both in Aotearoa and the UK. He lives in Ōamaru with his partner, son, and two rescue dogs.
Sofia Kalogeropoulou
Sofia Kalogeropoulou is a Senior Teaching Fellow in the School of Performing Arts at the University of Otago. She has taught dance in various institutions in Greece, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, was a principal dancer with Company Z and a freelance choreographer. She is a member of the steering committee of the Performance of the Real Research Theme (UO). Her research focuses on embodied practices and social activism, interdisciplinary performance and the interplay between dance, culture and national identity.
Mira Harrison-Woolrych
Mira Harrison-Woolrych is a doctor-writer with international experience in women's health; drug safety research and medical ethics. She is the author of five books, including two textbooks. Writing as Mira Harrison, her creative publications include the 'Admissions' series of short stories and 'One In Three', a novel about a junior doctor working in the NHS. Mira lives and works in Dunedin. She now divides her time between medical research on women's health and writing novels.
Matthew Jenkins
Matthew (Matt) Jenkins is a community-engaged researcher working within University of Otago’s Department of Psychological Medicine in Wellington, who explores how health-promoting behaviours, physical activity and nature-connection can support people experiencing early psychosis and mental distress. His work emphasises participatory, lived-experience-informed design as part of initiatives such as Te Hekenga Whaiora. Outside the tari, Matt is happiest trail-running, bush-walking and tinkering in nature, and lives in Wellington/Whanganui-a-Tara with his partner and young daughter.
Lynne Taylor
Dr Lynne Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in the Theology Programme, School of Arts, University of Otago. She is interested in human flourishing across the life span, including how local churches support the holistic well-being of both their members and the wider community. Her main research areas are pastoral care, chaplaincy (particularly in community-based settings), and the connection between people’s views of God and their motivations towards personal and social change.
Josephine Johnston
Josephine Johnston is Associate Professor in the Department of Bioethics at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka/University of Otago. Her research addresses ethical, legal, and policy issues in medicine and science, with a particular focus on human reproduction, psychiatry, genetics, and the conduct of research. Josephine teaches medical law to medical, dentistry, and pharmacy students and serves as co-chair of Health Research Council of New Zealand Ethics Committee.
Snita Ahir-Knight
Snita (she/her) is the Programme Lead for the lived experience education and research programme World of Difference | He Ao Whakatoihara kore. She brings lived experience expertise to her teaching and research. She also holds a Degree in Social Work, as well as a Master’s degree and a PhD in Philosophy. Snita is a trained child and adolescent therapist, and social worker. She has over 15 years of experience working in the not-for-profit, community, and mental health sectors in New Zealand and the UK.
Find out more about World of Difference | He Ao Whakatoihara kore
Rose Crossin
I’m a Senior Lecturer in the Dept. of Public Health, at the University of Otago (Christchurch campus). My research is on understanding, reducing, and preventing drug harm from a public health perspective, and I am interested in how harm data can inform evidence-based drug policy.
Jennifer Cattermole
Dr. Jennifer Cattermole is an Associate Professor in Music at the University of Otago. An ethnomusicologist, she has a particular interest in taonga pūoro and miheke oro – Māori and Moriori musical instruments, respectively. Her research interests include community music-making and the hauoro aspects of Indigenous musics – particularly the ways in which music fosters connectedness, health and wellbeing.
Megan Leask
My research projects aim to assign function to genetic variants that are associated with health and disease using bioinformatics, zebrafish and cell assays. I also work with Māori and Pacific genetic data to identify clinically-relevant genetic variants that are unique to Māori and Pacific people. The long-term outcomes of this work has the potential to reduce health disparities and improve genetic equity in these population groups.
John Erni
John Nguyet Erni is Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Chair Professor of Cultural Studies at The Education University of Hong Kong. Until 2022, he was Fung Hon Chu Endowed Chair of Humanics at Hong Kong Baptist University. In 2017 and 2019, he was elected President of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities and Corresponding Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities respectively. A recipient of many awards and grants, Erni has published widely on international and Asia-based cultural studies; human rights legal criticism; Chinese consumption of transnational culture; youth popular consumption in Hong Kong and Asia; gender and sexuality in media culture; cultural politics of race/ethnicity/migration; and critical public health. He is the author or editor of 11 academic titles.
Ylva Söderfeldt
Ylva Söderfeldt is Director of the Centre for Medical Humanities (CMH) and Associate Professor of History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala university. A medical historian, her research focuses on the role of patients in the generation of medical knowledge and shaping of medical practices. She also leads the development of digital resources and tools for text mining and analysis of 20th century medical print, and studies the relationship between computation in the humanities and biomedicine. At CMH, she leads the development of a medical humanities curriculum within the medical school and has initiated an artist-in-residence program and a graduate program in the medical humanities.
Maruška Svašek
My research interests include visual impairment and disability rights, care relations in transnational families, and the affective relationality of humans and nonhumans. Recent ethnographic work includes academic analysis, poetry, visual art, script writing, and film. I enjoy creative collaboration with students, research participants, visual artists, actors, and musicians.
Kari Clifford
Dr Clifford is a senior research fellow whose research focuses on patient reported and postoperative outcomes. She works in the fields of colorectal, vascular, and general surgery designing and coordinating research studies, conducting and teaching statistical analysis, and communicating the results to the public.
Fran Kewene
Fran Kewene is a Senior Lecturer in Health and a researcher working at the intersection of Indigenous methodologies, Māori theatre-based inquiry, and disability advocacy. Her work centres Te Tiriti o Waitangi, neurodiversity, and culturally safe practice in health education and community-led initiatives. Fran is passionate about arts-based approaches to equity, and collaborates across sectors to develop creative, inclusive models of care, training, and support.
Jude Sligo
I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Public Health. My research interests are multidisciplinary with a particular focus on the wellbeing of children, young people and whānau. I am passionate about research that makes positive change and have often incorporated participatory methods into my research, including with young activists and young people with chronic health conditions. My background is long and varied and includes being a teacher (across every sector of education at some stage of my ‘career’), researcher, mother, interviewer, support person, advocate and now, most importantly, a grandmother!
Grace Moore
Grace Moore teaches in the English & Linguistics programme at Otago. Her research encompasses literary representations of natural disasters and their aftermath (particularly fire), and she also works on climate change, memory and trauma.
Richard Egan
Richard Egan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Public Health, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago. He co-directs the Social and Behavioural Research Unit and is a former director of the Cancer Society Research Collaboration. Richard's research focuses on spirituality, health, and end-of-life care, supportive care in cancer, and assisted dying. He has over 80 peer-reviewed publications and has held leadership roles in public health organisations. Richard is also an Honorary Research Consultant for Meaningful Aging Australia and collaborates with Hospice NZ on spirituality matters.
Taryn Knox
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Sarah Redfearn
Sarah Redfearn
Sarah Redfearn is an experienced Occupational Therapist with a 35-year career dedicated to supporting wellbeing through the power of creative occupation.
Currently, Sarah serves as a Health Improvement Practitioner (HIP) at Mornington Health Clinic with WellSouth. In addition to her clinical role, she is a Master HIP Trainer for the Te Waipounamu HIP Training Regionalization Project. The work includes taking a population health approach, such as providing ‘Writing for Wellness’ initiatives in collaboration with the public library.
Sarah McKenzie
Sarah is a social scientist with over a decade of experience in conducting qualitative and quantitative research in mental health and suicide prevention. Her research interests include inequities in men's mental health and illness, social determinants of mental health, suicide prevention, and participatory research methods.
Tabea Bork-Hueffer
Tabea is Professor in Human Geography and Head of the Interdisciplinary Research Group Transient Spaces & Societies at Heidelberg University. She is a digital, social, and cultural geographer with a particular interest in how the entanglement of digital technologies in everyday lives affects social inclusion and exclusion, social sustainability, and well-being. Her research employs innovative and experimental multi- and mixed-method approaches, incorporating digital, mobile, and visual methods. Tabea's regional focus includes Central Europe (Austria, Germany) and Southeast and East Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, China).
Laura Salisbury
I am Professor of Modern Literature and Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter. My research in the medical humanities has developed understandings of the links between literary modernism and neuroscientific conceptions of language. Recently, I have been working on the relationship between waiting, time and care, especially in the British context, and I am now researching how endings are constructed and narrated in global health.
Julie Spray
Julie Spray is an interdisciplinary medical and childhood anthropologist and ethnographic illustrator who researches children’s perspectives on health and illness, public health policy and interventions, and health inequalities. Integrating biosocial, ethnographic and visual arts-based methods, her work advocates for greater inclusion in health policy of those marginalised by dominant social structures and values, particularly children, adolescents, and racially- or economically- disadvantaged communities. She is currently a lecturer in Children’s Studies at the University of Galway. She is author of The Children in Child Health: Negotiating Young Lives and Health in New Zealand (Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies, 2020). https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7382-8704
Pam McKinlay
Pam McKinlay (Tangata Tiriti) is an Ōtepoti Dunedin-based artist, curator, and convenor of the Art+Science Project. With a background in applied science and art history, she collaborates on community projects exploring climate change, sustainability, and biodiversity. Twice shortlisted for the New Zealand Textile Arts Awards (2023, 2024), her writing appears in Scope (Art & Design), Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue, Sociological Research (Beyond Text) and an upcoming chapter in Craft – The Hand of the Creator, Celebration and Revival (Springer).
Molly George
I am a social anthropologist with special interests in health, migration, ageing and medical education. I bring a humanities lens and a qualitative approach to any topic, including those typically addressed by the other sciences and/or a quantitative approach.
Elizabeth Stephens
Elizabeth Stephens is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland, and a former Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2017-2022). Her four monographs include Normality: A Critical Genealogy (University of Chicago Press 2017), co-authored with Peter Cryle, and Anatomy as Spectacle: Public Exhibitions of the Body from 1700 to the Present (Liverpool University Press 2011). She is the founder and convenor of the Australasian Health and Medical Humanities Network.
Ellen Murray
Ellen Murray is a PhD candidate at the University of Otago in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her Practice Research investigates how scenographic, embodied, and dramaturgical magic(al) realist techniques might stage difficult-to-represent aspects of the traumatic experience. She has presented at ATHE and PSi and is active in ATHE’s Theory and Criticism and Theatre and Social Change Focus Groups. An award-winning creative writer and multidisciplinary artist, her writing has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review and Hidden Compass and her digital art exhibited at the Tūhura Otago Museum. Her scholarly and creative practices engage speculative forms and narrative possibilities to reimagine interior, affective experiences, including trauma and grief.
Anna Williams
Anna Williams is an Assistant Research Fellow working at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Anna has a Bachelor of Technology (Food), Master of Philosophy (Humanities) and Post Graduate Diploma in Social Sector Evaluation Research. She is currently working towards her PhD in Social Anthropology exploring Pākehā (non-Māori of British descent) cultural identity and wellbeing. Her area of expertise is community development with a participatory and empowerment lens. She enjoys research that supports the needs of community members.
Julia Watkin
Julia Watkin has an educational history spanning the performing arts, film studies, floristry, human development and learning. She is passionate about the words we use to tell our stories and gained her Master of Education with a narrative research project on learning about the art of mindfulness. She is currently writing up a grounded theory narrative PhD thesis, a restorying of youth mental health with a group of rangatahi in Aotearoa, guided by the Social Anthropology and Psychological Medicine departments at the University of Otago.
Nouran El-Hawary
Nouran El-Hawary is a PhD candidate at the Social Anthropology Programme, at the University of Otago (New Zealand). She is in the final stages of writing up the PhD dissertation. In 2023, she started her research project that focuses on ‘Wellbeing Practices and Conceptions among Arabs with a Refugee Background.’ The research topic was motivated by her earlier professional and academic involvement with refugees. In 2019, she conducted an ethnography on refugee access to health among those who identify themselves as ‘West-African’ living in Rabat, Morocco. Before that, Nouran used to work as an advocacy and human rights officer with INGOs, based in Cairo, Egypt.
Franz van Beusekom
I am a PhD student at the School of Geography | Te Iho Whenua at the University of Otago | Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. My research interests sit at the intersection of social geography and critical neurodiversity studies in seeking to understand how spaces shape the identities and lived experiences of neurodivergent people. My PhD project explores how university teaching and learning spaces can be designed for the neurological pluriverse - accounting for the neurodiversity of the staff and student populations.
Alice Billington
I am an early career researcher, and I completed my DPhil (PhD) in the Social History of Medicine at the University of Oxford in 2023. My work focuses on the role of women doctors in menstrual research and their influences on shifting perspectives of menstruation and menstrual experience throughout the twentieth century.
Yi Li
Yi is a poet, screenwriter, visual artist, and certified forest therapist based between China, New Zealand, and Europe. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology and Geography from the University of Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand. With a background in film and communication, her work blends multimedia storytelling, cross-cultural narratives, and ethnography to explore how creativity shapes human–environment relationships, connecting planetary health, wellbeing, and creative placemaking. Her current sensory ethnography examines migrant eco-creators’ adaptation and resilience in island contexts facing climate uncertainty.
Bridget Bradley
Dr Bridget Bradley is a social anthropologist with an interest in mental health, disability, and social/environmental justice. Her fieldwork is based in the UK, where she has conducted long-term research and advocacy with people affected by body-focused repetitive behaviours (BFRBs) including hair pulling and skin picking. Her newer research has focused on climate anxiety, ecological emotions and collaborations with artists. She is a Lecturer at the department of Social Anthropology at University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Jeanne Snelling
Jeanne Snelling is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Otago. Her teaching and research encompass health law, the regulation of biomedical technologies, and criminal law. Jeanne’s current research involves legal issues arising from assisted dying and the regulation of reproduction. Jeanne is the Chair of the Ministerial Ethics Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology; a member of the NZ Law Commission’s Expert Advisory Group for the Review of Adult Decision-making Capacity Law; a member of an interdisciplinary HRC-funded research project on Assisted Dying in New Zealand; and is a co-convenor of the Masters in Bioethics and Health Law programme run by the University of Otago Bioethics Centre.
Victoria Chinn
Based in the discipline of health promotion, Victoria is interested in how wellbeing is experienced and enacted in everyday life. In particular, she aspires to align these experiences with the way health is promoted and evaluated using empowering and holistic approaches. Her current research focusses on two streams: 1) exploring women's empowerment in everyday health behaviour, and 2) co-designing a system of support with rangatahi (young people) experiencing psychosis. Nature-based movement is an emerging theme in her work.
Tania Moerenhout
I am a general practitioner and a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Bioethics at the University of Otago. I graduated as a general practitioner in Belgium in 2009 and completed a PhD in philosophy in 2019 before moving to Aotearoa in 2020. My research interests lie in digital health ethics, with a particular focus on telehealth and online consultations, assistive technology for older adults, artificial intelligence, and the integration of ethical principles into health technology design. I am a member of the National Ethics Advisory Committee (NEAC).
Katheryn Margaret Pascoe
I am a registered social worker and academic, teaching in to the Bachelor of Social Work and the Master (Applied) Social and Community work program. As a predominantly qualitative research, I have an interest in understanding macro factors that impact organisations, systems and micro practice. My research encompasses workforce wellbeing, care economics, disaster management and community development approaches.
Nikita Simpson
Nikita is a Reader in Anthropology at SOAS, University of London and the Co-Director of the Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA). Nikita’s research is focused on the structural and relational dimensions of mental distress, and the ways in which inequality comes to be embodied in the home and the environment. Nikita is the author of Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas, published with Duke University Press in 2026, in their Critical Global Health: Evidence, Efficacy, Ethnography series.
Hyunah Cho
I specialise in Music Therapy. Drawing on cross-disciplinary perspectives from music therapy, education, medical anthropology, and medical ethnomusicology, my ongoing research investigates how culture shapes individuals’ experiences of music therapy.
As an experienced health practitioner (registered Music Therapist in New Zealand and South Korea, and clinical psychotherapist in South Korea since 2013), I have worked with a wide range of individuals and groups—including children, young people, and older adults—to support and encourage holistic wellbeing.
My philosophy of education is grounded in manaakitanga (the Māori principle of caring for others with love and compassion), 조화 jo-hwa (the Korean concept of harmoniously weaving people together), and 상생 sangsaeng (the Korean understanding of mutual flourishing, fostering collaboration rather than competition). I believe that education must provide a supportive environment in which students can grow physically (taha tinana), mentally (taha hinengaro), socially (taha whānau), and spiritually (taha wairua).
Rachel Billington
Rachel Billington (Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki) is a lecturer in the Media, Film, and Communication Programme at the University of Otago, Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. She completed her doctoral research across Politics and Social Anthropology programmes, investigating how adolescents' political identities are informed by social media, as a site for both fostering interpersonal connections and learning about the world. Her research interests include recognition theory, affect theory, critical phenomenology, adolescent identities, social media personalisation and polarisation, and epistemic injustice in the algorithmic era.
Ulrika Dahl
Ulrika Dahl is a cultural anthropologist, writer and professor in gender studies at Uppsala University, where she conducts critical intersectional and interdisciplinary feminist research. In recent years Ulrika’s research has centred on the assisted reproduction of race and nation, specifically looking at the ”matching” of donated gametes and intended parents within Scandinavia’s public and private fertility care. In recent years she has also studied anti-gender and its function within right-wing political projects and on the conservative turn in feminism. he is also a member of the steering group of WHOLE, a newly established national Centre for Women’s Health, where she co-leads a work package on menopause. Ulrika’s research interests sit at the intersection of queer theory, kinship theory and affect theory, with particular interests in critical race and whiteness studies. Passionate about the promises of ethnography as a knowledge-making practice and in the transformative potential of creative writing, she is interested in imagining futurities otherwise. For full profile see here.
Christiane Leurquin
I am from New Caledonia, of French and Kanak descent, and I now call New Zealand home. I studied the history of Kanak population of New Caledonia, its demography and health, for my doctorate. My research is now focused on intangible cultural heritage and health and wellbeing in the Pacific.
Victoria Chinn
Based in the discipline of health promotion, Victoria is interested in how wellbeing is experienced and enacted in everyday life. In particular, she aspires to align these experiences with the way health is promoted and evaluated using empowering and holistic approaches. Her current research focusses on two streams: 1) exploring women's empowerment in everyday health behaviour, and 2) co-designing a system of support with rangatahi (young people) experiencing psychosis. Nature-based movement is an emerging theme in her work.
