Scientific Program Committee

Dr Priscilla Ennals

Scientific Program Chair

Priscilla is the Senior Manager of Research and Evaluation at Neami National – a community managed service delivery organisation working in mental health, housing and homelessness, and suicide prevention across Australia. Priscilla is an occupational therapist who has worked in and around mental health for 30+ years, in clinical mental health services, academia and now in research in the for-purpose sector.

Priscilla's passion is qualitative, participatory or coproduced research; based on a belief that if we listened better to people who experience mental ill-health/ distress/ use mental health services, we would design and deliver a more effective and joined up system of care.

Priscilla has been a long-time attendee at the OT Australia conference – continually returning for the learning, inspiration, new ideas, challenge and most importantly for the people, the connections and friendships made over the years (and the dancing of course). The privilege to work with the Conference Scientific Program Committee and develop a program that energises and connects us as a profession is going to be an exciting opportunity. We look forward to receiving your abstracts, ideas and to seeing you in Cairns in 2023.

Dr Amelia Di Tommaso

Committee Member

Amelia is a Lecturer in the Discipline of Occupational Therapy at Griffith University, Queensland. Amelia’s research interests focus on the experiences and implementation of occupation-centred practice in a variety of occupational therapy settings, particularly acute hospitals.

Dr Nastaran Doroud

Committee Member

Dr Nastaran Doroud is a Senior Lecturer and qualitative researcher in Occupational Therapy and Mental Health at Swinburne University of Technology. Nastaran has completed her Occupational Therapy education overseas where she worked as an OT in community and clinical mental health services. Nastaran’s research interests involve enabling recovery and participation for people living with mental illness, innovative and participatory research approaches, recovery-oriented practice and Recovery Colleges.

Nastaran has expertise in qualitative research design, photovoice, qualitative data analysis and systematic reviews. Nastaran coordinates and teaches in units in mental health, foundations of occupational science and therapy, and evidence-based practice at Swinburne University.

Dr Kitty Foley

Committee Member

Kitty is a Senior Lecturer at Southern Cross University, Gold Coast. Kitty completed her PhD at the Telethon Kids Institute in Perth and a postdoctoral fellowship at UNSW Sydney. Kitty clinical experience has been in paediatrics. Her research interests include exploring the health, wellbeing and participation of children, adolescents and adults with intellectual and development disabilities. Specifically, Kitty has a passion for working with autistic adults to improve participation and quality of life.

Associate Professor Courtenay Harris

Committee Member

Associate Professor Courtenay Harris is teaching and research academic and Deputy Head of the Allied Health School at Curtin University, Western Australia. I am an occupational therapist with over 30 years of experience in areas including paediatrics, injury management, private practice and higher education.

I am passionate in advancing the occupational therapy profession by building clinical research capacity and developing occupational therapy education. Research interests include decolonizing health and social care practitioner curriculums; leadership in higher education; investigating safe use of digital technologies by children to promote optimum physical, social and emotional health and wellbeing; and facilitating meaningful participation in everyday activities for people with injury, illness or disability.

Dr Moushami Kadkol

Committee Member

Moushami has a career spanning over 22 years as a clinician, researcher and in teaching; working for public hospitals and as a private practitioner. Her practice is focused on paediatric and neurological functional assessments and rehabilitation. Along with her PhD in Child Development with research in Sensory Processing Disorders in children, Moushami is a Certified practitioner of Sensory Integration Therapy, Listening Program and EEG Neuro Biofeedback.

She brings in a strong blend of domain knowledge and understanding of evidence-based practice which can be leveraged for effective therapeutic management of clients from variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Professor Rachael McDonald

Committee Member

Rachael McDonald is currently the Director of the MedTechVic Hub at Swinburne University, who aims to achieve excellence in transdisciplinary education, practice, and research to improve the lives of people with differing abilities through collaborative multidisciplinary practice, research and teaching concentrating on emerging areas of health and rehabilitation technology. She is passionate about enabling full participation in occupations for all people.

Professor Lynette McKenzie

Committee Member

Lynette McKenzie is a Professor of Occupational Therapy at the University of Sydney and the second alternate WFOT delegate.

Dr Caroline Mills

Committee Member

Caroline has been an occupational therapist for almost 20 years and has worked in the disability sector in Australia, The UK and China. Most of her work has focused on supporting autistic children and children with intellectual disability and their families in special education settings. While in practice, she also worked as a Positive Behaviour Support Specialist, supporting families and schools to implement best practice.

She finished her PhD at The University of Sydney in 2018, focused on supporting sensory processing in the classroom for autistic children with and without intellectual disability.

Caroline has been invited to give workshops on sensory processing and behaviour at numerous National and International Autism and Disability Conferences. She enjoys speaking to people and is passionate about research and practice to support children and adults with disabilities.

Caroline is a Lecturer in Occupational Therapy at Western Sydney University and was awarded an Early Career Research Fellowship in 2022.

Associate Professor Justin Scanlan

Committee Member

Associate Professor Justin Scanlan is a teaching and research academic at the University of Sydney. His clinical and research interests are in the area of mental health. He was the Conference Scientific Program Chair in 2019 and has been a member of the Conference Scientific Program Committees for the 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2021 National Conferences.

Dr Tamara Tse

Committee Member

Dr Tamara Tse is a Senior Lecturer and currently serves as the Discipline Lead in Occupational Therapy at La Trobe University. As an experienced Occupational Therapist with many years in clinical and management roles, Dr Tse is committed to education that improves the occupational therapy services and care. Dr Tse’s research has focused on participation-related outcomes; understanding and improving what people do and why they do it.

Dr Tse has strong research partnership with St. Vincent’s Hospital, where she also served as the Research Lead in Occupational Therapy and is responsible for numerous collaborative research projects. Dr Tse has mentored and supervised dozens of undergraduate and postgraduate occupational therapists to build capacity of occupational therapists to undertake clinical research.