Lisa Barnett PhD

Dr Barnett commenced at Deakin University, Melbourne in 2009 and completed a competitive National Health and Medical Research Council early career fellowship from 2011-14. Currently she is a Senior Lecturer on an Alfred Deakin Research Fellowship. Dr Barnett originally completed a Bachelor of Social Science majoring in youth work. Working in ‘frontline’ crisis services encouraged her to move into preventative health. She transitioned into health promotion and worked for over 10 years (1994–2005) in rural NSW designing and implementing health promotion interventions with a focus on increasing physical activity. During this time she completed a Masters’ in Public Health (University of NSW).

In 2006 she started a PhD (University of Sydney), which was a six year follow up study of children who had participated in a past health promotion project. Dr Barnett found that children who were movement competent were more likely to be fit, active adolescents with higher perceptions of competence. Now she is internationally recognized in the area of measurement and assessment of children’s actual and perceived movement skill competency and the relationship between these skills and health behaviours. She has been an invited speaker both nationally and internationally and is on the editorial board for three international journals. She has over 50 peer reviewed publications and more than 800 research citations.