Dr Samantha Thomas is an award winning Health Sociologist.  She is a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University’s Department of Marketing.

Her first real study was for her Ph.D thesis, when she interviewed long term psychiatric survivors about their experiences in New Zealand’s psychiatric asylums. Since then she has been privileged to listen to the  stories of hundreds of the health care system’s most vulnerable and stigmatised individuals, using these stories to advocate for changes to our health care system. She has conducted research with individuals as  diverse as squaddies and embedded journalists who were deployed to the Iraq War; prisoners with mental health problems; separated refugee children; the parents of children with Haemophilia; and individuals who  have consented to the organ donation of a recently lost relative.

In 2009 she was chosen as one of Australia’s Top Ten Emerging Health Leaders by the Weekend Australian, and in 2010 she won a prestigious Australian Davos Future Leader Award.

She is a Director on the board of Family Planning Victoria, and a member of the Consumer Advisory Group of Arthritis Victoria.

Samantha regularly chats to the media (she’s quite fond of tabloid journos!) and has appeared in TV programs such as Sunday Night (with Mike Munro), Catalyst, The 7.30 Report, Today Tonight, A Current Affair, and 9am with David and Kim. She has also been on radio programs such as 3AW’s Ross and John and Hinch, SBS Social Alchemy, and ABCs AM and PM. She really likes chatting to the Herald Sun journo’s who have been VERY patient listening to her her rants about obesity stigma, obesity surgery, and fad diets! Her first Australian interview was with John Laws!

But her most awesome achievement is being described by Frances from Corpulent as “The Coolest Academic on The Block”.

Samantha’s opinions on Discourse are her own, and do no reflect any of the views of the institutions she is attached to !

She can be found over at Twitter @TheDiscourse

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