Professor Lia Bryant

I am a rural sociologist and am passionate about collaborating with rural communities to understand and act on the challenges and opportunities facing rural Australia. My research is action oriented and is focused on co-designed outcomes which honours the knowledge and expertise within rural communities.

Through over 27 funded projects I have explored wellbeing in multiple ways, for example: the impacts of drought and national water policies on farming families, social belonging in rural communities in relation to social diversity and intersectionality, farmer exit and pluriactivity, rural and farming women and work, opportunities for work and education for older and rural people and over the last several years farmer distress and suicide prevention.

In 2017 I developed The National Enterprise for Rural Community Wellbeing (NERCW), UniSA. NERCW is a national project oriented body producing research that is collaborative and always actively involved in co-creating social change. It is sustained by and evolves from ongoing partnerships with its advisory panel consisting of representatives from grassroots organisations, industry, and state-based Departments of Primary Industries from NSW, VIC and SA.

In 2018 NERCW ran the first conference enabling grassroots organisations, academics, health, mental health and agricultural government representatives, industry representatives and people with lived experience to share knowledge and their trialled practices for farmer suicide prevention.

Currently I am working on two national research projects:

 1. Tailoring Suicide Prevention to Men in Farming (2019-March 2022) partnering with Departments of Primary Industries in NSW, SA, VIC; Australian Mental Health Commission, Queensland Mental Health Commission, Office of the Chief Psychiatrist, SA; PHN Country Health SA. This project provides an evidence base for grassroots community suicide prevention; partners with suicide prevention groups in three communities one in SA, VIC and NSW to co-design tailored strategies for men in farming occupations (family farmers; farm workers and farm managers).  The project also explores the pathways to access and referral between place-based mental health and rural stakeholders and comuunity suicide prevention groups and involves interviews with farming men living in the study regions to inform community co-designed and tailored strategies for suicide prevention. During the final year of the project a web-based hub will be developed to share co-designed resources with community suicide prevention networks and organisations across Australia.

 2. ARC Linkage Project , CIs Bryant, L and Wark, S ‘Care in the Country’  partnered with Uniting Communities, SA. This project focuses on post parental care planning for older rural parental carers and their sons/daughters with an intellectual disability. This project centres the aspirations and needs of people with a disability in planning for post-parental care.

Most of my 90 publications are interdisciplinary and draw on social and cultural geography, sociology, cultural studies and social work.  My scholarship focuses on space and place, rural communities, gender and embodiment, affect, hope, belonging, care and work. I also publish on critical and creative methodologies and methods and I employ a range of qualitative methods in my reseach including biographical interviews, memory work, participatory film-making and creative co-design using digital technologies and arts-based methods.

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy Flinders University

• Bachelor of Social Work South Australian Institute of Technology