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Associate Professor Suzanne Fraser

Suzanne Fraser Tel: +61 3 990 20322
Fax: +61 3 990 52410
Email: Suzanne.Fraser@monash.edu
Room W10.18 10th Floor
Building 11 (Menzies), Clayton Campus

Research
Publications
Grants
Professional Profile
Teaching
Postgraduate Supervision

Research

Suzanne's research focuses on the body, addiction, health and the self. Her background is in gender and cultural studies, and her PhD thesis analysed cosmetic surgery as a technology of gender. In 2003 this work was published as a book entitled ‘Cosmetic Surgery, Gender and Culture’. Suzanne is also author (with kylie valentine) of the book ‘Substance and substitution: Methadone subjects in liberal societies’.

Suzanne's main research focus at present is an ARC-funded study on obesity prevention health messages and their impact on mothers and their children: 'Improving Australia's response to childhood obesity: Prevention education and its impact on mothers and families.' Working with Professor Jan Wright of Wollongong University, Dr JaneMaree Maher and Dr Alan Petersen, the project will interview mothers and childcare workers to better understand how prevention education aimed at overweight and obesity in children is made sense of, and how it impacts on mothers and families as a whole. The project's research associate, Dr Claire Tanner, is currently conducting interviews with mothers across Melbourne.

Also underway in Suzanne's research program is a pilot study funded by the Monash University Faculty of Medicine entitled 'Analysing addiction concepts for improved public health outcomes in Australia' (CIs: Associate Professor Paul Dietze, Dr Suzanne Fraser, John Fitzgerald [VicHealth] and Associate Professor David Moore). The project aims to analyse concepts of addiction operating in alcohol and other drug (AOD) policy and service provision in Victoria. A preliminary indicative typology of addiction concepts found in the data has been developed, and this will be used to support a larger study seeking the same information across three important Australian public health areas: AOD, compulsive gambling and obesity. This larger study will identify connections and differences between the three and explore opportunities for and obstacles to cross-sector collaboration.

In addition to this work, Suzanne is presently finalising a second ARC Discovery project which she has been conducting since 2008 with Associate Professor Carla Treloar (UNSW), Associate Professor David Moore (Curtin University of Technology), Dr Kate Seear and Ms Emily Lenton. Entitled Under construction: The social and cultural politics of hepatitis C, the project combines two related questions drawn from feminist science studies and social sciences of health: 1) how diseases come to be constituted as stable medical objects and, 2) how politics inform this process of materialisation, shaping the meaning, distribution and trajectory of disease. As part of the project's activities Suzanne produced a Radio National documentary telling one man's story of treatment for hepatitis C. A book based on the project, co-authored with Dr Kate Seear, is due out this year: Making disease, making citizens: The politics of hepatitis C, Ashgate.

 

Publications

A list of Suzanne's publications can be found here.

Grants

A list of some recently received grants can be found here.

Professional Profile

Suzanne is a member of the following professional organisations:

Teaching

In 2012 Suzanne will teach:

ATS1311: Sex, Gender and Knowledge

Higher Degree Research Supervision

Postgraduate research students currently being supervised include:

Student Thesis Title / Topic Supervisor(s)
Emily Lenton "Hepatitis C and sexuality" (MA) Suzanne Fraser / Jo Lindsay
Dean Murphy
(University of NSW)		 "Kinship practices among gay men who have become parents through commercial surrogacy" (PhD) Suzanne Fraser / Asha Persson (University of NSW)
Kiran Pienaar "AIDS denialism in South Africa" (PhD) Suzanne Fraser / Steven Angelides
Nicola Thomson "Chaotic", "erratic" and "aggressive" clients? Exploring the limitations and possibilities of service provision for methamphetamine users (PhD) David Moore (Curtin University of Technology) / Suzanne Fraser

Recent Completions

Student Thesis Title / Topic Supervisor(s)
Neeti Aryal Khanal "The cradle and the gun: Nepali women in armed conflict" (MA) Maryanne Dever / Suzanne Fraser
Karolyne Quinn "The body in talk therapy" (PhD) JaneMaree Maher / Suzanne Fraser