ISSR ethnographer awarded UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award

13 Sep 2016

ISSR's Dr Cameron Parsell has been awarded a coveted UQ Foundation Research Excellence (FREA) award amidst keen competition. The award, totalling almost $80,000, incorporates both a prize and funding for future research.

The FREA award recognises researchers for demonstrated excellence and promise of future success in research, and leadership potential in their respective fields. The funds seek to advance and facilitate the research agenda of excellent early career researchers, particularly where there is evidence of the strategic importance and significance of their research.

Cameron’s research is directed toward generating an evidence-base for how people who are materially and socially excluded use social services, the types of social services they use, and what impact these services have on their lives. His solutions-oriented research is inspired by his previous career as a social worker in homeless accommodation, social housing and child protection. Cameron collaborates closely with social welfare groups, community organisations, social housing providers and governments across Australia.

The UQ FREA funds will build on and advance Cameron's Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) program of research into chronic homelessness focusing on the policy, resource, and individual nexus between enduring homelessness and access to and sustainment of permanent supportive housing. Other complementary research projects include examining the capacity of the state and not-for-profit organisations to deliver integrated services to meet the needs of vulnerable social housing and supportive housing tenants. Cameron is also working in collaboration with Monash University to develop a longitudinal analysis of the life outcomes of 14,000 Queensland young people participating in the Our Lives cohort study.

"The UQ FREA grant provides an opportunity to further investigate the societal conditions that contribute to long-term homelessness," Dr Parsell said.

"My team and I are committed to undertaking solution-oriented social science research capable of creating meaningful change."

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