Marlene Longbottom Dr

Dr Marlene Longbottom is a Yuin woman, from Roseby Park mission (Jerrinja) and is a Principal Research Fellow with the Ngarruwan Ngadju First Peoples Health & Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Wollongong. Her research experience spans over a decade where she has collaboratively designed, implemented community-based research and evaluation projects that is of benefit and priority driven by the Indigenous community. Dr Longbottom has extensive working experience in the health and human services sector with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in urban, regional and remote communities in New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory. Dr Longbottom’s approach to research is emancipative, it unapologetically centers First Nations communities through a social justice lens, that is informed by Critical Indigenous Feminism, Indigenous Research Methodologies, Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, Black Feminism and Intersectionality. Dr Longbottom’s focus is to ensure those often considered to be on the margins are centered, their stories and voices told and heard through the research she conducts.

Her Postdoctoral work included a cross national study between Australia and United States, that sought to understand the service system responses to violence and trauma experienced by Aboriginal Australians in NSW and Native Hawaiians in Hawai’i, United States where she was the International Visiting Scholar based within the Thompson School of Social Work at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, Hawai’i. Dr Longbottom returned from the United States in March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For an early career researcher Dr Longbottom’s track record includes publishing in international and national journals, her work is recognised internationally having been invited to a number of universities in the United States, while also being part of multiple nationally competitive grants totalling over $7 million.

In October 2021, Dr Longbottom was successful with a nationally competitive research grant to the Australian Research Council, Indigenous Discovery grant, where she will commence a new project in 2022 titled Navigating the Carceral Interface. This grant totalled over $1.2m where she is the lead Chief Investigator and a recipient of the prestigious Discovery Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award (DAATSIA) where she will complete the project between 2022 - 2026.