Megan Williams Lowitja Institute International Indigenous Health and Wellbeing Conference 2016

Megan Williams

Dr Megan Williams is a Wiradjuri descendant on her father’s side, and also has English and Irish heritage. Megan began working in needle and syringe programs and running blood-borne virus education projects on the Gold Coast in the early 1990s, including in correctional centres. Megan then did extra training to specialise in Aboriginal health research and evaluation, as well as teaching at UQ and UNSW. Her key research project ‘Connective Services’ was supported for a part-time PhD by the Lowitja Institute, looking at the support provided and needed to prevent reincarceration among Aboriginal people in an urban area. Together with Murri Watch, ATSIWALAS and ANTaR Qld, Megan worked on Project 10% campaigning for renewed justice policy in Qld, and documenting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples efforts to reduce prison rates. Megan is a research partner of Mibbinbah Ltd, an Aboriginal health promotion charity, assisting in the development of the ‘Be the Best You Can Be’ group program to go with the Australian feature film, Mad Bastards. There she earned the nick-name MegBastard, which she uses on Twitter, as one of the team members for #JustJustice, an online campaign to raise awareness about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s leadership and solutions in the criminal justice system. Megan is currently A Senior Research Fellow in the Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing Team at Western Sydney University, continuing to research Aboriginal leadership to reduce reincarceration. She is linked to the NHMRC-funded Centre for Research Excellence on Offender Health at UNSW and an ARC-funded project led by UNSW and Ted Noffs Foundation looking at young Aboriginal people’s after they leave residential rehabilitation.