Isobel Mudford is a PhD candidate in the School of Sociology:

"I have always been interested in social justice. Despite this, I came upon sociology almost by accident. As a gender studies major, sociology was a part of a broader, interdisciplinary study that led me through anthropology, languages, history, and international relations. This training gave me a broad appreciation for the role of social movements and identity in shaping people, communities, and public policy.

Landing in the School of Sociology to undertake honours, and now a PhD, has enabled me to ground and develop this appreciation within a discipline whose foundations are inherently about understanding the distribution of power, and critically analysing how we might overcome injustice.

This pursuit is integral to my work within health and policy fields outside of the university, where critical thinking is vital for empowering marginalised communities.

My current research project is investigating how the elimination of HIV in Australia is constituting new health problems that relate to being LGBTIQ.

I am interested in how the emergence of LGBTIQ health regulates queerness and, its potential to result in new methods for community care that challenge the pathologisation of queer people. With the rise of digital worlds, mass migration, and the unfortunate success of the alt-right, sociology, like many other social sciences, is transforming, developing methods and theories for how to best to understand our worlds, and how best to organise them for the better. This work is vital, especially in our lifetimes as we face the social upheaval and inequity of climate change, and other greed induced disasters that will affect disadvantaged people."