Our research team

Jaya Dantas

Dr Jaya A. R. Dantas is Professor of International Health, at the Curtin School of Population Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, and leads several grant-funded research including the SHAKTI project. Jaya is the Deputy Chair of the Curtin Academic Board (2021-2023) and Dean International in the Faculty of Health Sciences (2018 onwards) and was Director of Graduate Studies in the Faculty from 2011 to 2017.

Jaya has worked for 34 years in India, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Australia and has undertaken teaching and research consultancies in Pakistan, Timor-Leste, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and South Africa. Her central research interests focus on the consequences of post-conflict adversity on women and youth, the social determinants of health, and resilience and empowerment processes among refugee and migrant populations. Jaya’s research uses rights-based participatory approaches to understand health and social inequalities. She is experienced in international field mixed methods research comprising community household surveys, vulnerability assessments, participatory and ethnographic research.

Donna Chung

Donna is the John Curtin Distinguished Professor of Social Work and Social Policy at Curtin University, and has been involved in research, advocacy and teaching in violence against women and children for a number of decades. Her work has always involved working closely with policy makers, managers and practitioners to develop relevant evidence for change and evaluate existing programs both in working with women and children and responding to those perpetrating domestic and sexual violence. Donna is a member of several organisations and committees working to end violence against women as well as a consultant to governments on policy and service design in these areas.  

Jonathan Hallett

Jonathan is a Senior Lecturer in the Curtin School of Population Health in the discipline of health promotion and teaches political theory and policy advocacy to public health students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Jonathan’s research is based at the Collaboration for Evidence, Research and Impact in Public Health (CERIPH) (formerly WA Centre for Health Promotion Research), a multi-disciplinary applied research group focused on translational research and community partnerships. He is also a member of the management team for the Sexual Health and Blood-borne Virus Applied Research and Evaluation Network (SiREN). 

Sender Dovchin

Associate Professor Sender Dovchin is a Director of Research and Principal Research Fellow and at the School of Education, Curtin University, Australia. She is also a Discovery Early Career Research Fellow of the Australian Research Council. Previously, she was an Associate Professor at the University of Aizu, Japan and was awarded Young Scientist (Kakenhi) by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Dr Dovchin is an Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics. She was identified as “Top Researcher in the field of Language & Linguistics” under The Humanities, Arts & Literature of The Australian’s 2021 Research Magazine and Top 250 Researchers in Australia in 2021. She has authored numerous articles in international peer-reviewed journals and authored six books with international publishers such as Routledge, Springer, Palgrave Macmillan and Multilingual Matters.  

Carol Kaplanian

Dr Carol Kaplanian has extensive experience across cultural family and domestic violence, specialising in honour-based violence. Through her academic studies and work with the WA Police, WA Department of Health, Department of Justice, the Non-Government sector and Middle Eastern refugee camps, she has an extensive research background, plus strong training, education and casework experience.

Carol has completed a PhD on ‘Honour-based Violence in Jordan’ and has a Bachelor’s Degree in social work and social policy, plus a Masters in social work. She specialises in clinical counselling and working with victims of torture and trauma, the latter of which involved spending an extensive amount of time working in Jordanian refugee camps offering counselling and education to refugees. Her clinical skills are extensive covering matters of family and domestic violence, sexual assault and sexual violence, child sexual abuse and honour based violence, including forced marriage, honour killings, dowry abuse and female genital cutting/mutilation.

Carol has consulted on high level cases relating to honour killings, forced marriage, dowry abuse and female genital cutting and mutilation. She has over a decade of experience in the area of family and domestic violence and has worked in policy, training and education, supervision, building counselling programs for survivors and perpetrators and has empowered countless women through her therapeutic approach.

Carol has also worked in the academic realm, teaching students, coordinating courses and supervising both Master and PhD level students. She has also clinically supervised professionals working in the area of domestic violence and victim engagement. Her work has been recognised through winning human rights awards and most recently, she has been awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to understand the perspectives of migrant and refugee women who have experienced family violence. Her Fellowship has been endorsed and funded by the WA Department of Communities.

Research Assistants

Azriel Lo

Anusri Banerjee

Georgia Griffin (until 20/02/2024)

Zakia Jeemi (until 01/03/2023)