Lead researcher

Georgina Patel

Lead researcher, Georgina Patel (Woods-Child) is a lawyer and Research Associate at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), collaborating across the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences. She is the recipient of a New Zealand Law Foundation Grant for this research. Georgina draws on experience practising in family law and criminal law (Crown Prosecutions). In 2016, while in legal practice, she completed an LLM (Hons) at the University of Auckland, with a dissertation exploring the impact of indirect trauma exposure on criminal lawyers. Based across Melbourne, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand, Georgina is an independent researcher and consultant with a focus on psychosocial risk in legal workplaces.

Associate Professsor

Dr Katey Thom

Katey Thom is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at AUT. She has extensively researched topics around mental distress, addiction and the law and has previously led Law Foundation grants, and a large-scale Borrin Foundation grant aiming to re-envisage the criminal justice system to better respond to whānau experiencing mental distress and/or addiction. She teaches in the areas of mental health law, social justice, non-adversarial justice approaches, and trauma-informed law.

Professor Khylee Quince

Associate Professor Khylee Quince (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungungu) is the Dean of the Faculty of Law at AUT. She is a leading Māori law academic, community advocate and cultural report writer.

Professor Brian McKenna

Professor Brian McKenna has a joint appointment with the Auckland Regional Forensic Mental Health Service and the Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences at AUT. He has previously researched with Dr Thom on professional supervision to support mental health clinicians experiencing vicarious trauma. Professor Brian McKenna also has had extensive experience in quantitative research. This includes the inclusion of statistics in the research design, data entry, data management, data analysis and write up.

Professor Kate Diesfeld

Professor Kate Diesfeld is a leading health law academic at AUT with research interests in mental health law, professional regulation and the role of using the law preventatively. Professor Kate Diesfeld practiced mental health and disability law in the United States and England. She is a member of the Auckland District Law Society and a Fellow of the American College of Legal Medicine.

Associate Professor Nick Garrett

Associate Professor Nick Garrett (Ngāti Maniapoto) is a biostatistician at AUT. He has over 26 years of experience and has significant expertise on quantitative study design, analysis and interpretation. His experience spans a range of health topics including psychology, gambling, health delivery, intervention studies, environmental and social determinants of health.

Dr Madeline Hayward

Dr Madeline Hayward completed her PhD in Health Sciences at AUT looking at Police responses to citizens experiencing mental health distress.

Lecturer

Anja Vorster

Dr Anja Vorster is a lecturer and data analyst/manager within the School of Public Health and Interdisciplinary Studies. Her work primarily revolves around research projects in the space of social and health sciences.