GO X LTU Webinar Series

Lineup

• More details about A/Prof Kirsty Forsdike

  A/Prof Kirsty Forsdike

  Kirsty is the Associate Dean, Research and Industry Engagement in the Rural Health School at La Trobe. She is an Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow and part of the managing team of ReGEN: Reducing Gender-Based Violence Research Group in the Violet Vines Marshman Centre for Rural Health Research. Her research focuses on organisational responses to gender based interpersonal violence, through a feminist socio-ecological lens.

• More details about Dr Samantha Marshall

  Dr Samantha Marshall

  Dr Samantha Marshall is a Research Fellow at the Rural Health School at La Trobe University. Her work is well known for using structural and socio-ecological frameworks to examine barriers to women in sport and other historically male-dominated settings, particularly gender-based violence. Samantha's research contributes to national and international conversations on how to make sport safer and more inclusive for women, girls and people of diverse genders by challenging dominant paradigms that focus on only increasing the numbers of opportunities to participate in sport. Instead she advocates for reducing structural barriers to women in all roles in sport, as well as other male-dominated contexts like academia. Feminist institutionalism informs her work and analysis. At the Rural Health School, Samantha is a Research Fellow in the Reducing Gender-based Violence (ReGEN) Research Group and works on the federally funded Safer Sport project. She is instrumental in delivering a mixed-methods approach to measuring the prevalence of gender-based violence in sport, including a Concept Mapping Project, three national surveys, and a large-scale qualitative component. She is also an embedded researcher in a professional team within the university, evaluating sexual violence work within the university, advising on the development of the La Trobe University Prevention and Response to Gender-based Violence Action Plan and Outcomes Framework 2026-2029, and working with staff to develop intersectional gender-based violence primary prevention work.

• More details about Dr Simone Fullagar

  Dr Simone Fullagar

  Dr Simone Fullagar (she/they) is Professor and Chair of the Sport and Gender Equity research hub at Griffith University, Australia. She has published feminist, interdisciplinary sociological research using (post)qualitative approaches across sport, leisure and mental health fields. Simone collaborates with colleagues on a number of ARC projects that address gender equity and diverse forms of embodied movement. Her most recently book is Pavlidis, A., Fullagar, S., & O'Brien, W. (2025). Feminist futures for sport: Tracing the affective dynamics of gender equity in sport organizations, Palgrave. Simone lives on the unceded lands of the Yugambeh and Kombumerri peoples of the Gold Coast.

• More details about Dr Adele Pavlidis

  Dr Adele Pavlidis

  Dr Adele Pavlidis is an Associate Professor in Sociology with the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, and previously a DECRA Fellow (2018 to 2021). She is author of three books, Sport, Gender and Power: The Rise of Roller Derby(2016, Routledge, with Simone Fullagar), Feminism and a Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery (Palgrave, with Simone Fullagar and Wendy O'Brien) and Feminist Futures in Sport: Exploring the Affective Dynamics of Change in Australian Rules Football and Roller Derby (2025, Palgrave, with Simone Fullagar and Wendy O'Brien). She has published widely on a range of sociocultural issues in sport and leisure, with a focus on gender and power relations. Theoretically her work traverses contemporary scholarship on affect, power and organizations, and she is deeply interested in social, cultural and personal transformation and the entanglements between people, organizations, and wellbeing. Her work focuses on sport as a key site of change in Australian society and an important context for changing and challenging attitudes towards women. In particular she is interested in connecting social, cultural and health concepts with sport in the hope of creating more inclusive futures. Adele is the Research Seminar Series Convenor for the Sport and Gender Equity (SAGE) at research group at Griffith, which is formally partnered with the Global Observatory for Gender Equality and Sport in Switzerland. Adele serves on the Advisory Board and Expert Group of the Global Observatory.

• More details about Dr Mary Woessner

  Dr Mary Woessner

  Dr. Mary Woessner is an early career researcher and senior lecturer within the Institute for Health and Sport (IHES) at VU. She is the Co-Chair of the Early and Midcareer Researcher Association within IHES and leads a research group on Safety and Wellbeing in Sport, with embedded research programs on gender based violence, child safeguarding and history and gender justice in sport. She values mixed methods and co-design approaches to research that focus on human-centred outcomes. Her research team is committed to implementing trauma informed practices in how we engage in our research and with each other. She has completed training in Trauma Informed Care and Psychological Safety. She ispassionate about contributing to evidence-based decision making and developing innovative solutions for complex societal challenges. Dr. Woessner's research focuses on understanding and improving how communities engage with and deliver community sport in ways that are safe, inclusive, and supportive of mental and physical well-being. In her teaching, Dr. Woessner prioritises the student experience and continuously seek to innovate our approach, encouraging my sessional staff and team members to integrate real-world scenarios into their practice. She is a co-founder of the International Research Network on Violence and Integrity in Sport, and recently co-chaired the Research Pre-Congress Symposium at the first International Congress on Safe Sport Research. Description

• More details about Dr Aurélie Pankowiak

  Dr Aurélie Pankowiak

  Dr Aurélie Pankowiak is a Senior Research Fellow, at the Institute for Health and Sport, Victoria University, where she leads the child safeguarding stream of the Safe and Inclusive Sport Research Group. Aurélie completed her PhD at Victoria University in 2020 in National Paralympic Sport Policies. She is a current recipient of a VicHealth Early Career Research Fellowship (May 2023 – Nov 2026), as part of which she leads a program of research on safeguarding children and young people from abuse in sport and on centring the inclusion of victims and survivors in research, policy and practice. She co-founded the International Research Network on Violence and Integrity in Sport (IRNOVIS) (Funded 2020-24). While Aurélie's work is multi-disciplinary/ -theoretical, she increasingly works from a critical and institutional perspective, in collaboration with victims and survivors of diverse forms of abuse in sport. She is a survivor-researcher: her research draws from her experience of persistent child sexual abuse/ exploitation perpetrated by her coach during her adolescence in community sport in France, as well as the ensuing judicial and sport complaints processes. Aurélie' is passionate about using the knowledge from her research and experience to advocate for change for young people and victims and survivors. She is regularly invited to contribute her expertise to research/ policy/ advocacy projects, including: in Australia: Play By The Rules, The National Survirvor Foundation (previoulsy In Good Faith Foundation), Sport and Recreation Victoria - Preventing Violence Through Sport (Australia), The Inquiry into the Queensland Academy of Sport Bill 2025; and Internationally: The Athlete Survivor Assist (previoulsy The Army of Survivors) (USA), Sport & Rights Alliance Athlete For Safer Sport International network), The French National Inquiry into Sport Federation Failures (France), the French Ethics and Sport Committee.