Research development at the Peninsula campus

With the emerging focus on health and wellbeing at Peninsula, the recent appointment of Professor Carol Morse to the position of Research Director further strengthens the campus's commitment in supporting and developing this area.

Professor Morse's own research expertise focuses largely on health and wellbeing in a range of demographics including the elderly, different cultural groups, women and new parents.

She is currently heavily involved in exploring our aging population and is undertaking a qualitative research study on nonagenarians looking at the meanings of advanced old age as well as what it means to people to have reached 90 plus years of age. They study will also look at what participants attribute their longevity to.

A second research project Professor Morse is currently involved in is the Australian component of the Global Aging Research Network's (GARNet) aging well study.

The project is an international collaboration between 12 countries including the USA, Britain, Europe, Hong Kong, Scandinavia, Australia and Africa looking at community-dwelling men and women in the 50 to 89 year old age group.

A five factor model will explore participants' physical health and functional abilities, mental health and wellbeing, social connectiveness, material resources, and leisure and physical activity. Professor Morse's particular focus has concentrated on the experiences of people from different migrant groups living in urban and rural settings. To date, the experiences of 909 Anglo-Australians, Italian-Australians and Vietnamese-Australians have been studied. Three reports are presently under editorial review in international journals and three presentations have been made to international conferences in Canada and Spain, and nationally at the Annual Conference of the Australian Association of Gerontology.

As well as her ongoing research commitments Professor Morse has edited a two volume book in collaboration with researchers from Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and UCLA, titled The Art of Aging: Lessons from three nations (Vol1), and The Art of care giving to older people (Vol2).

She is a regular guest and presenter at major national and international conferences and recent published articles include 'Memory in postmenopausal women', 'Stress and coping in parents of premature infants', and 'Premenstrual Syndrome - comparing perspectives from Chinese medicine and Western medicine'.

Professor Morse is keen to establish collaborative links between university staff as well as develop stronger links with the local, national and international research communities. She would like to hear about current projects being undertaken at the campus and will be looking at potential funding sources for research development. Staff are invited to submit details of their current publications and presentations to conferences and workshops for inclusion in the newsletter.