Laura Dunstan

The University of Melbourne

Laura Dunstan is a current PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her project, titled ‘Indigenous Family Life and Child Health and Wellbeing in Australia: Examining the Connections’, offers a quantitative investigation of the complex and varied associations between multiple dimensions of Indigenous family life and a range of Indigenous child health and wellbeing outcomes. As part of the ARC Linkage Project: ‘Improving Indigenous health and wellbeing over the family life course’, her project seeks to develop improved approaches to examining Indigneous family life and to reveal the diverse ways Indigenous families may support improved child wellbeing. In line with increasing diversity in Australian family life patterns, Laura’s research interests extend to developing and applying sociological frameworks of family life that respond to the shifting state of familial relationalities embedded in contemporary family life, and to examining how these relationalities may form important connections between family and individual wellbeing over the life course.