Trauma and adversity research highlighted during Research Week

Western Sydney University’s Trauma and Resilience Research Group within the Translational Health Research Institute is undertaking research to understand the impact of trauma and adversity.

Experts from the group – Dr Natalie Morrison, Dr Elizabeth Conroy and Dr Anna Denejkina – will present a seminar on 26 October as part of the University’s Research Week, exploring the foundations of trauma and resilience research.

According to Dr Morrison, research shows that in Australia up to 75 per cent of the general population might be exposed to a potentially traumatic event in their lifetime.

“Trauma research is a large and diverse research domain – from biologically based research, through to psychometrics, extending into mental health and clinical psychology and more broadly across sociology and history too,” said Dr Morrison.

“Our Research Week webinar, Traumatic Stress: An Introduction, will explain what traumatic stress is and what it may look like and why trauma impacts can be so intense and long-lasting.”

“Follow up seminars will look more closely at the aspects of researching in this field, including training to be a researcher in the field, how to look after oneself as a researcher, the unique ethics of researching in this area – and ultimately the translational power of the research.”

The seminar will also highlight the trauma research work conducted by members of the Trauma and Resilience Research Group.

Dr Morrison will speak about her work with a number of transgenerational trauma projects looking at local Indigenous populations, Holocaust survivors in Australia, and decedents of those who lived through the Armenian genocide.

While Dr Denejkina will present her research into intergenerational trauma transmission in military families, focusing on familial relationships pertaining to returned Soviet veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War, 1979 to 1989, and Dr Conroy will detail her work on experiences of trauma in the context of deep social exclusion including substance use populations and people seeking asylum.

To register for Traumatic Stress: An Introduction or to learn more about Research Week, please visit the web page (opens in a new window).

ENDS

25 October 2021

Media Unit