Alice Cairns

Dr Alice Cairns is a senior research fellow with the Murtupuni Centre for Rural and Remote Health, James Cook University. Based in Atherton, she works across the north west and far north Queensland region with a focus on the Torres and Cape region where she lived for 6 years until 2020. She graduated as an Occupational Therapist in 2002 and practiced for 12 years, specialising in mental health rehabilitation before moving into academia. Alice was awarded her PhD in 2017 from the Queensland University of Technology, her PhD research focused on youth mental health and factors associated with goal setting, help-seeking and work and study outcomes.

Since 2017, her research interests have broaded to focus on health service research and exploring innovative models of service delivery for remote communities. She is on the leadership team for the Northern Australian Research Network (NARN). She has a particular interest in partnering with rural clinicians to grow rural research capacity and solve rural and remote health services challenges.

She is currently supervising 5 PhD student (2 primary), and 1 masters students. She is open to hearing from any prospective student interested in a rural research career.