CARSS Staff
Director
Professor Michael Bittman
Project team leader responsible for the implementation of the project and delivery of milestones.
Professor Michael Bittman is recognized as a world authority on how people use their time. He is President of the International Association of Time Use Researchers, chair of the relevant United Nations Expert Group, and was invited to address the United States’ National Academy of Sciences on these topics. Michael Bittman was elected a Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 2006. He has extensive experience in conducting applied research. He has acted as a high level consultant to government departments and community organisations in Australia and overseas. The total value of all the contracts and grants on which Michael is a named researcher exceeds $4,000,000. About a third of this research funding was awarded via the highly competitive, peer-reviewed Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council schemes.
He was one of the lead researchers on a national study into the social costs and benefits of migration to Australia which has entailed extensive community participative social research across several metropolitan and regional communities in Australia. He led the teams that have studied the living standards of apprentices; children and the communication media; patterns of physical activity and obesity; and the social impact of the mobile.
Fields of Expertise: social change; work and family balance; the social organisation of care; social impact of new technologies; social policy; leisure studies; and community living standards.
Skills: Extensive experience in conducting quantitative & qualitative research; social policy skills, statistical skills; report writing, project management, and senior executive and leadership skills.
Relevant Experience: Director, Centre for Applied Research in the Social Sciences. Ten years experience as part of the Senior Management Team at the Social Policy Research Centre, including one year as Acting Director. Director of the Budget Standards Unit, consultant on a range of projects jointly funded by state and commonwealth governments on economic and social participation, work-family balance, mature age employment, volunteering, informal carers, children’s media consumption and apprentice living standards.
Deputy Director
Dr Debra Dunstan: My primary research interests are in the areas of pain-related work-disability and occupational rehabilitation. My past work has involved the validation of a screening tool to identifying physically injured workers at risk of chronic disability; and, the development and evaluation of a related biopsychosocial intervention. At present I am exploring the use of a social cognition model to inform a comprehensive treatment for unemployed pain-disabled workers. As I am a clinician with extensive experience in rural practice, I am also interested in research relating to mental health issues in rural Australia, and practice-based outcomes of evidence-based practice.
Deputy Director
Dr Liz Ellis: Liz Ellis is a founding member of SLATS (Second Language Acquisition Twin Study), an international research team led by Prof. Brian Byrne with members in the UK, US, Norway and Australia. SLATS is investigating behaviour-genetic approaches to second language acquisition via twin studies.
Liz Ellis’ research interests are in the intersection of bilingual and multilingual studies and teacher cognition, and in critical approaches to TESOL.
Deputy Director
Dr John Scott: Dr John Scott is a specialist in qualitative methods, especially focus groups. Research interests include social impact assessment, project evaluation and community planning.
Deputy Director
Associate Professor Tony Sorensen has researched and written extensively about economic and social conditions in rural and regional Australia, the processes that have created them, management problems arising, and potential public policy responses. His current research interests focus on the importance of regional leadership for improving community resilience and regional governance. He has recently completed a major piece of research on Migration Futures for Australia. He currently has an ARC Discovery Grant (with others) examining Australian regional governance, and another examining the dynamics of change in Australia’s rural heartland. He is also a member of the ARC Research Network Task-Force on Australia’s Urban and Regional Futures and an ARC Research Network in Spatially Integrated Social Science.
Senior Project Officer
Ron Reavell has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New England (majoring in Politics and Sociology) and a Masters in International Studies from The University of Sydney. He taught for many years at the University of the Sunshine Coast and also at the Oorala Centre for Indigenous students at the UNE.
He has extensive experience in project management, tendering procedures, proposal application, and the supervision and administration of projects and staff. He is an experienced researcher and was a member of the research team on the DIMA Project, the Community Social Plan for Tamworth Regional Council Project, the Armidale Youth Speeding Project and the Living Wage for Apprentices project. His most recent publication discusses the pros and cons of the proposed Compact of South Pacific States in a book he co-edited, The Eye of the Cyclone: Governance and Stability in the Pacific.
Senior Research Associate
Dr Alison F McIntosh (BUrbRegPlan (Hons) (UNE), PhD (UNE)
Affiliations
Member of Planning Institute of Australia
Member of Institute of Australian Geographers
Alison worked for two decades in private industry (predominantly in computing and as a business analyst) prior to making a tree-change in the mid-1980s away from capital city living. She then became a beef cattle producer and small business operator on the Mid North Coast of NSW where she still resides. In the mid-1990s, she commenced external studies at UNE as an undergraduate student. Alison essentially works from her home as a researcher and consultant. Through affiliations with two universities, she continues her involvement and interest in aspects of geography and planning while remaining firmly committed to and involved with local issues and events. She is very active and a recognised leader within her place-based communities.
Alison has cross-disciplinary interests, particularly in relation to neighbourhoods and communities; migration; aspects affecting wellbeing; relevance of a sense of belonging; how, where and with whom close social ties are maintained; engaging people in consultation processes; and the relevance of grass-roots activities. She is also interested the physical landscape, recognising that understanding the natural environment can help to provide important indicators for ways to reduce negative human impacts.