Research Accelerator 2024 Speakers

Academic Consulting's Director, Dr Lyn Lavery, will be joined by an amazing line-up of guest speakers for this year's conference. Further details about each speaker can be found below.

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Pat Bazeley

Pat Bazeley is Director of Research Support P/L and Adjunct Professor at the Translational Research and Social Innovation Centre at Western Sydney University. Since graduating in psychology, she has worked in community development, as an evaluation researcher, and in academic research development. For almost 30 years, Pat has provided research training and project consulting to academics, graduate students and practitioners representing a wide range of disciplines across Australia and internationally. Pat’s research has focused on qualitative and mixed methods data analysis, the development and performance of researchers, and the well-being of older women. She has published books, chapters, and articles on mixed methods and qualitative data analysis. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research and was president of the Mixed Methods International Research Association from 2015–2016.
Pat Bazeley

Anuja Cabraal

Dr Anuja Cabraal runs workshops on qualitative research methodology and design, reflexivity, the use of emoji as a tool for analysis and the application of NVivo and Quirkos. Dr Cabraal started her research career close to 20 years ago. For over 10 years, she has been a trainer of NVivo, and her training skills extend to other software, including Quirkos. Dr Cabraal has worked in various qualitative research areas and disciplines. Past research areas include social welfare, migration and mobility, learning and teaching, architecture and psychology. She has also had the privilege of working on larger research projects, including for the Royal Commission.
Anuja Cabraal

Silvana di Gregorio

Dr Silvana di Gregorio is the Product Research Director and Head of Qualitative Research at Lumivero. She is a sociologist and former academic with a PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics. She has been training, consulting, and publishing about qualitative data analysis software since 1995. For 16 years, she ran her own training and consulting business, SdG Associates. Silvana is the author of Voice to Text: Automating Transcription and Using Web 2.0 Tools for Qualitative Analysis, Qualitative Research Design for Software Users and Qualitative Research and Technology: In the Midst of a Revolution (with Judith Davidson) and Tools for Qualitative Analysis (with Linda Gilbert and Kristi Jackson). Silvana is part of the product team at Lumivero and led the Lumivero AI Advisory Group, working with customers to develop Nvivo’s generative AI offering.
Silvana di Gregorio

Nigel King

Nigel is an Emeritus Professor in Applied Psychology at the University of Huddersfield. He has a longstanding interest in using qualitative methods, especially in ‘real world’ settings and has written extensively on template analysis, interview methods and visual elicitation methods, amongst other topics. Theoretically, he draws on various experiential traditions, especially phenomenology and personal construct theory. His substantive interests include human meaning-making in relation to nature and outdoor spaces, bereavement experiences, and collaborative work in health and social care. Nigel is the lead author of Interviews in Qualitative Research (with Christine Horrocks and Jo Brooks), and co-author of Template Analysis for Business and Management Students (with Jo Brooks) and Dyadic Interviews in Qualitative Research: A Practical Guide (with Joanna Szulc).
Nigel King

John Parsons

Professor John Parsons is passionate about postgraduate research supervision and was awarded the Butland Award for Excellence in Research Supervision in 2024. He commences a new role as the new Associate Dean (Postgraduate) in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland in January 2025 and has supervised over 85 postgraduate research students across nursing, physiotherapy practice, and engineering. From 2021–2024, John led the design and delivery of the Master of Physiotherapy Practice programme at the University of Auckland and led the establishment of the Doctor of Health Sciences that commenced in 2023. John completed his BSc (Hons) in Physiotherapy in 1995 from Brunel University in the UK and a master’s and PhD at the University of Auckland. He was the Director of Postgraduate Studies and Associate Head of School (Postgraduate Research) in the School of Nursing from 2011–2022 and has held senior external roles including Bupa Fellow in Allied Health Researcher and Senior Advisor in Access Home Health. During his career, John has published over 100 papers and book chapters and has been a principal investigator or a named investigator on grants valued at more than $14 million.
John Parsons

Sally Pirie

Sally Campbell Pirie (she/her/hers) is an anthropologist, visual artist, and qualitative methodologist. Her research interests include the anthropology of childhood and family, arts-based and comics-based qualitative and ethnographic research methods, gender diversity, and labour force feminisation. She is Principal Investigator of the Gender Moxie Project (funded by the Spencer Foundation), which focuses on understanding transgender and other gender-diverse children’s experiences and resiliencies through an interdisciplinary and art-informed lens. She served as Editor-in-Chief of Anthropology and Education Quarterly for two editorial terms, concluding in 2019; and is now on the editorial teams of Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures and Pedagogy, Culture and Society; and the editorial boards of Qualitative Research, Anthropology and Humanism, and Folk, Knowledge, Place. Sally is currently Professor of Child and Family Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and was a 2021 recipient of the Grinnell College Alumni Award for her distinguished service, embodying the social justice and community service principles of Grinnell College. She authored the Shane series of comic research methods texts (under a previous surname). See www.sallypirie.com.
Sally Pirie

Helen Sword

Helen Sword is scholar, poet and master teacher whose books on writing and writers include Stylish Academic Writing (Harvard 2012), The Writer's Diet (Chicago 2016), Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write (Harvard 2017) and Writing with Pleasure (Princeton 2023). She is Professor Emeritus in the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation at the University of Auckland, a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and the recipient of several major research and teaching awards. Helen has facilitated writing workshops at more than 100 universities, conferences, and research institutes on every continent except Antarctica. See her website (www.helensword.com) for links to free and low-cost writing resources including books, workshops, retreats, videos, innovative editing tools, and the WriteSPACE, an international writing community with members in 30+ countries.
Helen Sword

Daniel Turner

Daniel Turner is the founder and director of Quirkos, a simple tool for qualitative analysis. Daniel started Quirkos after completing his PhD, and a decade in academia working on qualitative health research, with the aim of providing more accessible qualitative software. He regularly writes a blog on qualitative research, hosts a YouTube channel and has contributed to many books and published articles. He is also an invited speaker and trainer on Quirkos and other aspects of qualitative research to a global audience.
Daniel Turner