New Graduate Research Students

Meet our new PhD and Master Students

Giulia Depangher
Giulia will be working with A/Prof Lena Sanci and Prof Meredith Temple-Smith on Victorian GPs' perceptions of treating children in general practice during her Master of Philosophy project.

Mandy McKenzie
Mandy McKenzie's PhD will examine the needs and experiences of family members or friends of victims of domestic violence. The research will examine how technology-based interventions may assist family and friends to provide support to domestic violence victims. The study is supervised by Kelsey Hegarty and Laura Tarzia, and supported by a scholarship provided by the Melbourne Networked Society Institute.

Jason Chiang
Jason Chiang is a PhD candidate joining GP OSMOTIC, an NHMRC funded study led by the Department of General Practice. He is under the supervision of A/Prof John Furler and Dr Jo-Anne Manski-Nankervis. Jason will be involved in the implementation phase of the project and will be exploring multimorbidity, epigenetic markers and glycaemia (hypoglycaemia, HbA1c and glycaemic variability) in people with type 2 diabetes.

Karyn Ferguson
The aim of Karyn’s PhD project is to accurately measure Aboriginal maternal, infant and childhood health outcomes and the disparity between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations in the Goulburn Murray Region. She will be working with Prof Sandra Eades
A/Prof Jane Freemantle and A/Prof Douglas Boyle.

Christo Karuna
The supervisor for Christo’s proposed PhD research project is Professor Jane Gunn. As part of his project, he would be examining whether a process-based model I recently developed improves the quality of primary care. Adopting a patient-centred approach, the quality of primary care is determined by the quality of the relationships a patient has with his/her key stakeholders. Both economic as well as social aspects of these relationships would be considered that are focused on continuous process improvement. He hypothesises that this process-based perspective would lead to reduction in costs and improvement in the quality of primary care, leading to better health outcomes overall.

Sally Marsden
Sally has been working at WIRE, Women’s Information for the last seven years. This work has often included supporting women who have had negative counselling experiences when referred to psychologists after experiencing family violence. Her PhD research project will focus on informing the creation of a practice and training model for psychologists with the aim of enhancing counselling responses to family violence. Her supervisors are Kelsey Hegarty and Cathy Humphreys.

Frances Martin
Frances’ PhD project ‘Linkage of hospital and primary care data to drive improvements in cancer care’ seeks to provide evidence to improve cancer care through analyses of key transition points in the cancer care pathway. The project lead by Professor Jon Emery at the Victorian Comprehensive Centre, will be the first large-scale linkage of primary care and hospital data for cancer patients in Australia. It will enable cancer care at the key points at the intersection of primary and acute cancer care to be explored.