Join us for the launch of the School of Psychology Cultural Diversity in Research Community of Practice

To mark the launch of the Cultural Diversity in Research Community of Practice, join us to hear presentations and reflections from four members of our school, who will share how they have integrated cultural diversity into their research programs. A panel discussion will follow, where presenters will give practical advice on increasing cultural diversity in your research, and Community of Practice co-leads Trinh Ha and Rebekah Laidsaar-Powell will discuss the aims of the Community of Practice and how staff and students can become involved.

Presentations:

•             Dr Sandra Garrido: Innovation in the Assessment of Childhood Adversity: A Community-Informed Approach for Culturally Diverse Australian Families

•             A/Prof Celine van Golde: How can you not see that? Why culture matters when conducting research on Gender Based Violence.

•             Prof Haryana Dhillon: Making psycho-oncology less WEIRD: cultural adaptation of constructs, measures, and interventions

•             Dr Yue Li: Who’s in the sample? Recruitment and cultural diversity in emotion regulation research

Dr. Sandra Garrido is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney and adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour & Development at Western Sydney University. She has been the recipient of an NHMRC-ARC Dementia Research Fellowship in 2016 and the Western Sydney University Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research in 2017. Her interests span youth mental health, dementia, depression, social prescribing, music cognition, and culturally responsive assessment. She has authored over 90 academic publications and served as STEM Ambassador to the Australian Parliament, (2023-2025) facilitating evidence-informed policy discussions on youth mental health and digital wellbeing. 

Dr Celine van Golde is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney. Her expertise is the study of memory recollections for various parties in the criminal justice system. She explores the effects of (repeated) stressful events on the memory of different stakeholders (e.g., victim-survivors, suspects, police), looking for ways to obtain the most accurate accounts of these events, while ensuring psychological wellbeing. She does this both for children as well as adults. She further investigates which factors play a role in fact finders, like jurors and judges’ decision making. She gives regular guest lectures within the NSW Police Force Child Abuse Squad, the Domestic Violence Investigators, and the Detective Training Program, as well as advising judges and lawyers on issues related to eyewitness memory. Recently, her focus is on gender-based violence where her research facilitates the investigation and prosecution of these offences. She focuses both on physical forms of violence, as well as non-physical forms, such as coercive control and emotional abuse.

Prof Haryana Dhillon is a Professor in Psycho-Oncology and Chair and Executive Director of the Psycho-Oncology Cooperative Research Group at the University of Sydney. Haryana is also Chair of the University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee and incoming President of the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia. Haryana is a behavioural scientist with experience in cancer clinical research, in particular post-cancer diagnosis supportive care and psycho-oncology. With more than three decades of experience in cancer clinical research, Haryana is known for asking rigorous, practical questions and turning the answers into real-world change.

Dr Yue Li is a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Psychology working with Prof Carolyn MacCann. She obtained her PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas in August 2025. Her research focuses on culture, emotion, and interpersonal relationships. Her current work examines cultural differences in motives, strategies, and consequences of making others feel worse. During her PhD, she investigated how cultural context shapes the perception of emotional facial expressions and the regulation of one’s own and romantic partner’s emotions, and their implications for health and well-being.