Research Interests

Her research interests include:

• Young people and children in social care
• men and masculinities
• young people and sexual health/sexual literacies
• sexual practices and technology
• sexual communication and consent
• LGBTIQA+ health and wellbeing
• Ageing and aged care
• Mental health and suicide prevention

Her methodological expertise includes:

• Qualitative research methods (interviews, focus groups, qualitative surveys, vignette methodologies)
• Coproduction
• Recruitment of difficult-to-engage communities and populations
• Socio-constructionist and interpretivist paradigms
• Poststructuralism
• Thematic analysis, discourse analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis
• Feminist and queer approaches
• Research ethics

Current Research

Young Men in Social Care

While previously focused on sexual health and wellbeing (see below), she is currently focused on further developing her work around men and masculinity, with a particular focus on young men engaged in social care services, including care leavers and NEET young men, and co-production methodologies. This work involves better understanding the intersections of poverty, confidence, and disconnection, and how this impacts underserved young men when it comes to building healthy intimate and platonic relationships. She is particularly interested in trauma-informed approaches in working with underserved young men in wake of incel and MRA ideologies that promote harmful beliefs around intimate and platonic relationships with women. This builds on a long history of working in the men and masculinity space, including theoretical work on masculinity theorising, intersections between ageing, mental health and men's sheds programs, men's bodywork and PIED consumption practices, Australian identity and masculinity, and men's engagements with sexual health and sexual consent.

Current Projects

• Determining effective co-production strategies for working with young men in sensitive health and social care research

Young People and Sexual Literacies

Dr Waling has worked across a range of projects investigating knowledge and behaviours around sexual and reproductive health, and how young people collate and make sense of sexual health information from a variety of resources.She is currently on a large Department of Health (Australia) project exploring how to support young people in developing sexual literacies, also working with parents and teachers.

Current

• Building an integrated approach to supporting sexual health promotion and education among young people

Recent Projects

• SSASH 2018
• Building young people’s sexual literacy in digital spaces
• Young People and Sources of Sexual Health Information

Sexual Consent, Intimacy, and Sexual Practices

Her work explores how sexual communication is understood and enacted during sexual encounters, and the implications of these practices for sex education and gendered violence prevention. This also includes her body of work on how young men engage in sexting and the production of dick pics, and the use of biomedical, biodigital, and biomechanical technologies for sex and intimacy.

Current

• Men, Sex and Intimacy

Recent Projects

• M3: Media, Masculinities and Mental Health
• TechSex

LGBTIQA+ Health and Wellbeing

Dr Waling has spent several years working across a variety of research projects focused on improving the mental and physical health and wellbeing of LGBTIQA+ people. This includes her highly impactful work on LGBTIQA+ use of crisis support services during times of mental health or personal distress, with key findings highlighting that more than 71% of LGBTIQA+ refused the use of a service during their most recent crisis. This has led to significant policy change in Australia regarding the provision of specialist LGBTIQA+ services in mental health. She has also worked in the ageing and aged care space, exploring how LGBTIQA+ people engage with aged care and reflecting on their ageing experiences. Building on this body of work, Dr Waling is a co-investigator on a large Medical Research Future Fund developing interventions to support better care and inclusion for LGBTIQA+ older people in residential care.

Current Projects

• Co-creating rainbow inclusive care for gender and sexually diverse people in residential aged care

Recent Projects

• Rainbow Ageing
• Understanding LGBTIQ+ Lives in Crisis
• Lean on Me

Career Details

Dr Waling completed her undergraduate degree (Bachelor of Arts Honours) at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada (2006-2010), and her PhD in Sociology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia (2011-2015). During this time she took on several research assistantships and teaching duties, including the coordination of several large undergraduate units at Monash University in gender and sociology.

From 2015-2024 she worked at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS), La Trobe University and later, the Department of Public Health (DPH) at La Trobe University in Australia. Here she supported, or led, several large multi-method projects exploring young men, intimacy and sexual consent, men’s bodywork practices and use of performance and image enhancing drugs, LGBTIQA+ mental health, wellbeing and suicide prevention, LGBTIQA+ ageing, physical health, and aged care, technology, sex and intimacy, and young people and sexual literacies. This included a prestigious Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) exploring how young, cisgender heterosexual men understand and engage sexual communication, consent, and intimacy during sexual encounters. During her time she also developed the Research Impact portfolio, which supported the centre in planning and identifying pathways to impact for future grants, impact case studies, and promotion.

During her time in DPH she coordinated a Master’s of Public Health specialisation in Sex, Health and Society to support students seeking to work on sexual and reproductive health, and working with diverse communities including LGBTIQA+ people. She was the Deputy Research and Industry Engagement Coordinator, where she worked with DPH to support the development of its teaching and research staff in terms of research collaborations, grants, knowledge transfer/translation, and publications. She was also co-chair of the LGBTIQA+ Working Group and a member of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and a previous member of academic board.

She has considerable experience working in multi-disciplinary research teams that involve clinical practictioners, criminologists, statisticians legal professionals, and social workers. She also has extensive experience in working with community, government, industry, and NGO research partners, with a keen understanding in how to develop long-lasting partnerships. Alongside this, she has knowledge in working with media, having completed more than 70+ radio/podcast, and text/print interviews with various outlets, and written more than 19 articles for The Conversation to support research engagement with the public and research translation.

Dr Waling has earned several awards for her research. These include the La Trobe University Vice Chancellor's Excellence in Research Impact award for her work on LGBTIQA+ experiences of crisis support services (2021), and the Emerald Literai Award for her paper published in Safer Communities, among others.

Research Grants

Dr Waling has earned more than $3.8million (AUD) or £1.9million GPB in research funding across her career. Recent successes in the last five years include:

• NIHR (RSS Hub Research Methods Fund)
  • £27k Determining effective co-production strategies for working with young men in sensitive health and social care research (2026-2027)
• Australian Reseach Council
  • $428k Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (2020-2024)
    • Young men, sex, and sexual intimacy/consent
  • $338k Discovery Project (2019-2022)
    • Technology, sexual practices, law
• Medical Research Future Fund
  • $999k (2022-2028)
    • LGBTIQA+ and residential aged care intervention
• Northwestern Melbourne Primary Health Network
  • $150,000 (2020-2021)
    • LGBTIQA+ peer suicide
• Commonwealth Department of Health
  • $1.396m (2022-2026)
    • Young people, parent, teachers, and sex education
  • $230,000 (2021-2022)
    • Young people and digital sexual literacies

External Roles

Grant Committee Membership

• NIHR Doctoral Award (Local Authority, Social Care and Public Health)

Editorial Board Member

• Sexualities
• Journal of Men's Studies
• International Journal of Qualitative Research
• Emerald Advances in Masculinities