Flinders Research Centre: Student Wellbeing and Prevention of Violence (SWAPv)

Promoting Mental Health — Preventing Violence

Centre Directors

Professor Phillp T Slee & Professor Rosalind Murray-Harvey

Mission statement

The Centre is dedicated to making a difference to the health and wellbeing of young people's lives focusing on promoting mental health and preventing violence in educational settings.

Aims

The key aims of the Centre are:

  • to encourage, support and expand research and policy development in the fields of both mental health and violence prevention in educational settings,
  • to attract funding for research and development in these fields from a variety of sources,
  • to connect nationally and internationally with researchers and policy makers in the fields of mental health and violence prevention,
  • to develop and promote research-based best practice and policy initiatives in these fields,
  • to develop and strengthen partnerships with the wider community related to the work of the Centre,
  • to support early career researchers who have as their foci mental health and/or violence prevention,
  • to support research higher degree students pursuing research in these fields,
  • to build a collegial, collaborative research culture of actively contributing members

The Centre Welcomes

  • Visiting scholars to support the Centre’s research and publications.
  • Students with an interest in undertaking research projects.
  • Invitations for potential partnership research and evaluation projects.

 2010-2011 SWAPv Annual Report

SWAPv 2010_11 Annual Report (PDF 242KB)

Research Activities

The Centre represents the multiple Research, Consultancy, Professional Learning and higher degree research supervision interests of its members, and is broadly inclusive of a rich and varied mix of approaches to undertaking research in the particular fields that provide the foci of the Centre.

Projects currently underway that align with the work of the Centre include:

  • Cyber-bullying: Coping with negative and enhancing positive uses of new technologies, in relationships in educational settings. (2009-2011). Internationally funded DIISR-EU research and training initiative jointly supported by COST Europe involving 28 EU countries and Australia.
  • KidsMatter Early Childhood Evaluation (2010-2012). 2-year project involving 111 centres Australia wide. KidsMatter Early Childhood is the Australian national early childhood mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention initiative.
  • KidsMatter Evaluation (2006-). An Australia wide 2-year evaluation of a primary school mental health initiative involving 100 schools continues to generate publications and further funding.
  • KidsMatter Scoping/options paper (2010) for ongoing QA of the KM Primary program.

Management and Organization

Advisory Board

The Advisory Board, in addition to contributing to the strategic direction of the research, will also assist in securing additional funding, and enhance our interface with community, corporate and political leaders. The Advisory Board will be convened once a year.

Leadership and management of the Centre will jointly be undertaken by Professors Phillip Slee and Rosalind Murray Harvey with support of the Flinders Educational Futures Research Institute.

Information for students interested in enrolling in a higher degree research program at Flinders University related to the fields of mental health or/and violence prevention in education can be found on the Research Higher Degrees section of the Flinders University website.

Contact

Useful Links