Who we are

A C A D E M I C S

Our researchers have a diverse set of skills and experience and work with a variety of settings

Professor Jennifer Tieman

Professor Jennifer Tieman is a Matthew Flinders Fellow in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. As Director and Research Lead for two national palliative care resources, CareSearch and PalliAGED she is responsible for ensuring palliative care evidence is available for health professionals, aged care workers and people and families affected by the need for palliative care.  The CareSearch project team undertakes research on knowledge retrieval and knowledge dissemination and investigates approaches that encourage the use of evidence in health, particularly in palliative care and end of life care. Jennifer is part of the consortium team delivering the ELDAC project (www.eldac.com.au).  She is also research lead of a specialist research team, Flinders Filters, which is building the evidence around bibliometric retrieval and use.

Dr Deidre Morgan

As an occupational therapist with 25 years clinical experience Dr Deidre Morgan has an in-depth understanding of the public health system and the value and importance of clinical research that informs practical patient care. Her clinical and research focus is in palliative care with a particular interest in ways to optimise function at the end-of-life. She has established an international collaboration seeking to validate a palliative care assessment tool for use in occupational therapy. She is a co-investigator on the End of Life Essentials project. 

Associate Professor Grant Davies

Associate Professor Grant Davies started his career as a registered nurse in general and radiation oncology settings and in acute palliative care units at the Royal Brisbane Hospital and has over 30 years’ experience in health.  In addition to his work as a Registered Nurse, he has worked in Queensland Health and the Victorian Department of Human Services in the 90s working on palliative care policies and health outcomes.  

He started his career in complaints management in the federal Office of the Commissioner for Complaints in early 2001 and the Office of the Aged Care Commissioner.  He moved to the Victorian Office of the Health Services Commissioner in October 2009, where he was Deputy Commissioner and Health Services Commissioner until February 2017 when he started as Director of Projects in Safer Care Victoria. He commenced as Health and Community Services Complaints Commissioner in South Australia in February 2018. He has been appointed this year as an Associate Professor at Flinders University in the Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death and Dying where his areas of interest are communication, applied ethics, complaints resolution and public administration.  He is involved in supervision of RHD students, teaching and research.

Dr Caroline Phelan

Dr Caroline Phelan has an extensive clinical background working across the acute health care environment, in particular, critical care and pain management. She has worked in senior clinical roles, as well as in management, education and research positions. She recently completed an update of the clinical evidence pages for CareSearch and has joined the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders as an academic. Her research interests include decision making, older people, pain management and critical theory.

Dr Kelly Jones

Dr Kelly Jones has academic status at Flinders University. Kelly has over 20 years research and teaching experience in public health with expertise in mixed methods approaches, social epidemiology, health services research and Indigenous health. Kelly's work in mixed methods health services research has won both State and National recognition. She is passionate about the research/social justice policy nexus and using evidence to shape healthy outcomes for marginalised populations.

Dr Aileen Collier

Dr Aileen Collier is currently Senior Lecturer, Te: Ārai Palliative Care and End-of-life Research Group , University of Auckland and Clinical Nurse Specialist in Community Palliative Care at Hospice West Auckland. Her research program is focused on human agency, safety and quality of palliative care. Aileen’s research undergirds a commitment to her practical work, with moral and pragmatic questions always being anchored to clinical ‘realities’.  She is the current Chair of Palliative Care Nurses New Zealand. Her research is ‘interdisciplinary’ in inclination and she is an advocate of research that brings together diverse disciplines in response to 'wicked' problems.  When she’s not researching, you’ll find Aileen hanging out with her two horses Toby and Nero. 

Associate Professor Kim Devery

Associate Professor Kim Devery has worked as a nurse in Africa, USA, UK and Australia across a wide variety of clinical practice settings. As an academic in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences Kim guides doctors, nurses and allied health professionals to understand their own strengths and challenges and strengthen their capacity in delivering health care services to patients who are at the end of life. Kim leads a major national project End-of-Life Essentials, which aims to increase professionals' skill and confidence in end-of-life care in Australian acute hospitals.

Deb Rawlings

Deb Rawlings has over 30 years’ experience in Palliative and End of Life Care. She has a nursing background with clinical experience in oncology (Australia and the UK) and palliative care (UK). Deb's current research interests are in models of end of life care (including leading work on the role of death doulas in end of life care), MOOCs (as an author on the Dying2Learn MOOC), dying in acute hospitals (as a co-investigator on the End of Life Essentials project) and bereavement rituals. Deb has previously worked on three other national palliative care projects (CareSearch, PCOC and the National Rural Palliative Care Program) and is currently an academic and researcher in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences.

Dr Lauren Miller-Lewis

Dr Lauren Miller-Lewis has academic status at Flinders University and is a Lecturer at Central Queensland University with a specific interest on positive psychology.  She is involved in Dying2Learn data analysis and undertakes research relating to death, dying, and palliative care. 

Dr Sara Javanparast

Dr Sara Javanparast is a Research Fellow at the Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death and Dying. She has a background in Medicine with many years of experience in primary health care policy, practice and research. She worked for 8 years at the Iranian Ministry of Health when she was involved in primary health care policy development and implementation. After moving to Australia in 2002, she completed her PhD in public health at Flinders University. Since then she has been involved in a range of public health research projects. Her areas of research interest and expertise include primary health care, community engagement, equity and access to health care particularly for community groups experiencing disadvantage and qualitative research methods.

Dr Georgia Rowley

Dr Georgia Rowley is a qualitative social health researcher with a background in Psychology (Hons) and Public Health. Her academic research interests focus on conducting meaningful and reciprocal cross-cultural research with communities who are routinely excluded from mainstream research, including culturally and linguistically diverse migrants and refugee groups, with a particular focus on individuals who do not speak English and those who reside in and rural areas. Georgia’s PhD explored the impact of social determinants of health among older Greek migrants in widowhood, with a focus on mourning and bereavement.