Career Details

Dr Waling completed her undergraduate degree (Bachelor of Arts Honours) at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada (2006-2010), and her PhD in Sociology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia (2011-2015). During this time she took on several research assistantships and teaching duties, including the coordination of several large undergraduate units at Monash University in gender and sociology.

From 2015-2024 she worked at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS), La Trobe University and later, the Department of Public Health (DPH) at La Trobe University in Australia. Here she supported, or led, several large multi-method projects exploring young men, intimacy and sexual consent, men’s bodywork practices and use of performance and image enhancing drugs, LGBTIQA+ mental health, wellbeing and suicide prevention, LGBTIQA+ ageing, physical health, and aged care, technology, sex and intimacy, and young people and sexual literacies. This included a prestigious Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) exploring how young, cisgender heterosexual men understand and engage sexual communication, consent, and intimacy during sexual encounters. During her time she also developed the Research Impact portfolio, which supported the centre in planning and identifying pathways to impact for future grants, impact case studies, and promotion.

During her time in DPH she coordinated a Master’s of Public Health specialisation in Sex, Health and Society to support students seeking to work on sexual and reproductive health, and working with diverse communities including LGBTIQA+ people. She was the Deputy Research and Industry Engagement Coordinator, where she worked with DPH to support the development of its teaching and research staff in terms of research collaborations, grants, knowledge transfer/translation, and publications. She was also co-chair of the LGBTIQA+ Working Group and a member of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and a previous member of academic board.

She has considerable experience working in multi-disciplinary research teams that involve clinical practictioners, criminologists, statisticians legal professionals, and social workers. She also has extensive experience in working with community, government, industry, and NGO research partners, with a keen understanding in how to develop long-lasting partnerships. Alongside this, she has knowledge in working with media, having completed more than 70+ radio/podcast, and text/print interviews with various outlets, and written more than 18 articles for The Conversation to support research engagement with the public and research translation.

Dr Waling has earned several awards for her research. These include the La Trobe University Vice Chancellor's Excellence in Research Impact award for her work on LGBTIQA+ experiences of crisis support services (2021), and the Emerald Literai Award for her paper published in Safer Communities, among others.

Research Interests

Her research interests include:

• Young people and children in social care
• men and masculinities
• young people and sexual health/sexual literacies
• sexual practices and technology
• sexual comunication and consent
• LGBTIQA+ health and wellbeing

Her methodological expertise includes:

• Qualitative research methods (interviews, focus groups, qualitative surveys, vignette methodologies)
• Recruitment of difficult-to-engage communities and populations
• Socio-constructionist and interpretavist paradigms
• Poststructuralism
• thematic analysis, discourse analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis
• Reseach ethics

Research Grants

Dr Waling has earned more than $3.8million (AUD) or $1.96million GPB in research funding across her career. Recent successes in the last five years include (In AUD):

• Australian Reseach Council
  • $428k Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (2020-2024)
    • Young men, sex, and sexual intimacy/consent
  • $338k Discovery Project (2019-2022)
    • Technology, sexual practices, law
• Medical Research Future Fund
  • $999k (2022-2028)
    • LGBTIQA+ and residential aged care intervention
• Northwestern Melbourne Primary Health Network
  • $150,000 (2020-2021)
    • LGBTIQA+ peer suicide
• Commonwealth Department of Health
  • $1.396m (2022-2026)
    • Young people, parent, teachers, and sex education
  • $230,000 (2021-2022)
    • Young people and digital sexual literacies