Megan Williams PhD is Wiradjuri through her father’s family and has more than 20 years’ experience working on programs and research to improve the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, particularly in the criminal justice system.
Megan has Indigenous and Western social science research training and is an alumnus of the Lowitja Institute, Australia’s national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research institute. She is known to the Lowitja Institute as a senior researcher, and participates in committees, project reviews and organisational planning.
Megan has government and industry funding and collaborations for research, including about health service delivery, workforce development and facilitation of community driven research. Megan is past chair of the Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network Human Research Ethics Committee.
Being active in research translation, Megan has conveyed Indigenous people’s research, stories and expertise to professional bodies, communities, parliamentarians, students and the media.
Megan is known as a mentor for less-experienced Aboriginal researchers, particularly through her role as a Chief Investigator for the Centre for Research Excellence in Strengthening Systems for Indigenous Health Care Equity (CRE-STRIDE). She supervises research students in Aboriginal health and has facilitated Aboriginal research support networks.
Megan has a PhD (her thesis was Connective services: post-prison release support in an urban Aboriginal population, UNSW), a professional certificate in Indigenous research (University of Melbourne), a bachelor of social science (UQ), is a trained Aboriginal Family Wellbeing Program facilitator, and is a member of the Australasian Evaluation Society. Until recently she was Professor of Public Health (Indigenous) at UTS, but is now full-time with Yulang, where she is the majority owner.
