Associate Investigators
Dr Kate Mason
Kate Mason is currently a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Public Health, Policy and Systems at the University of Liverpool. She has broad research interests in social and geographical health inequalities, and applying quantitative methods to understand how individual, social and environmental factors combine to influence physical and mental health. Kate recently completed her PhD in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, focussing on how neighbourhood built environments influence obesity-related outcomes in the UK, examining in particular how this might vary for different people and in different places. Her current research examines the impact of local and national social, economic and welfare policies on child health inequalities. Kate previously lived and worked in Melbourne, contributing to Australian research on housing and health, and since then has continued to collaborate with CRE leads Professors Bentley and Baker.
Dr Melanie Andersen
Dr Melanie Andersen is a Research Fellow at the School of Population Health at UNSW Sydney and an Honorary Research Fellow at The George Institute for Global Health. Melanie is a mixed methods researcher with expertise in the social and environmental determinants of health across the life course and a special interest in housing. Much of Melanie’s work involves working in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and organisations to address community priorities.
Dr Ankur Singh
Ankur Singh is a Research Fellow in Social Epidemiology and Lecturer (Epidemiology) at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. His PhD was conferred in January 2018, and was awarded the Dean’s Commendation for Doctoral Thesis Excellence by the University of Adelaide. In the short time since the awarding of his PhD, Dr Singh has published 26 peer-reviewed publications, the majority of which were first-authored, in journals such as American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Tobacco Control and in Journal of Dental Research. Ankur has applied advanced quantitative methods (multilevel modelling, causal mediation analysis and computer simulation models using multi-state life table approaches) as well as evidence synthesis methods (systematic and scoping reviews). In post-doc, Ankur has developed his capacity in the discipline of social epidemiology particularly through high quality research in the area of housing and health and health inequalities. Ankur is currently the Chair of the Global Working Group on Social Determinants of Health in the International Union for Health Promotion and Education, Montreal, Canada
Dr Lyrian Daniel
Lyrian Daniel is a Research Fellow in the Healthy Cities Research Group at The University of Adelaide. She is interested in hazardous housing and its implications for population health and wellbeing. Her recent work has focusses on Australia’s hidden cold housing problem, energy hardship among tenant households, and thermal standards for homes.
Professor Peter Phibbs
Peter is Director of the Henry Halloran Trust at the University of Sydney (a research trust established as a result of philanthropy). He is also a member of the WHO Housing and Health Guidelines group with a particular interest in the accessibility of housing. He was trained as a social economist and geographer and has been a housing researcher for over thirty years. He recently reflected that he spent the first half of his career building evidence to assist the development of housing policy and the second half of his career researching why politicians do not seem all that interested in evidence.
Associate Professor Nevil Pierse
Associate Professor Nevil Pierse is co-director of He Kainga Oranga/Housing and Health Research Programme. Originally a statistician by training, his current work is done in partnership with a wide variety of stakeholders including government and community organisations, and is focused on the design and implementation of randomised trials and natural experiments to improve the home and community enviroments. His previous studies have shown the benefits of efficient home heating and insulation, which was instrumental in the $300 Million EECA, Warm Up New Zealand, Heat Smart programme. Nevil’s other previous work includes the HRC funded Home Injury Prevention Intervention, which showed that simple home repairs and modification reduced the number of falls in homes by 27%. He was part of the group awarded the 2014 NZ Prime Ministers prize for Science. He is currently working on the Healthy Housing Initiative with which looks at home interventions to prevent rehospitalisation of children with respiratory disease. This programme has accessed and remediated 15,530 homes in New Zealand, and resulted in a decrease in hospital admission and GP visits. In 2019 it was won the prime ministers prize for best public service programme. Nevil current leads the 'Ending Homelessness in New Zealand: Housing First' MBIE funded research programme. Nevil has a keen interest in big data and leads many Housing and Health projects on the integrated data infrastructure.
Dr Rowan Arundel
Rowan Arundel is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, Planning and International Development at the University of Amsterdam, specializing in Geographic Information Science (GIS) and housing research. His research examines dynamics of housing inequalities and interactions between housing, labour and welfare, as well as more broadly spatial analysis and macro and micro quantitative methods. His current research focuses on the interaction between growing spatial divides in housing markets and divided housing access in driving wealth inequalities.
Professor Rachel
Ong ViforJ
Rachel Ong ViforJ is currently an ARC Future Fellow and Professor of Economics at Curtin University. Her research focuses on housing and population ageing in Australia. These include housing wealth in retirement, intergenerational housing concerns, housing and the economy, and the links between housing precariousness, health and wellbeing. Rachel was the recipient of the Economic Society of Australia’s Young Economist Award in 2018. She is currently a member of the CEDA Council on Economic Policy.
Professor Richard Ronald
Richard Ronald is Professor of Housing in the Department of Geography and Planning, and the Center for Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He is the current Editor of Palgrave Macmillan’s ‘Contemporary City’ book series and former Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Housing Policy. Richard sits on various funding and scientific advisory boards in Australia, Canada, Poland, Sweden and the UK. His own research focuses on housing in relation to social, economic and urban transformations in Europe and Pacific Asia, and has been funded by, among others, the European Research Council, the Australian Research Council, The Dutch Ministry of the Interior, the Japan Foundation and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. He has also been an Honorary, Visiting or Distinguished Professor at the University of Birmingham (UK), National University Singapore (Singapore), Kyung Hee University (South Korea), and the Open University of Hong Kong (China). Richard originally graduated from Nottingham University and Nottingham Trent University in the UK and was a Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellow at Kobe University in Japan.