DrElke Mitchell

Dr Elke Mitchell is an ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow at the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, University of Sydney. Elke’s interdisciplinary research examines the socio-structural conditions shaping reproduction, sexuality and health, drawing on anthropology, sociology, Pacific studies and feminist theory. She has over two decades of experience conducting research across Asia and the Pacific on topics including adolescent pregnancy and young parenthood, family planning, abortion, infertility, maternal health, sexual violence, reproductive coercion and HIV/STIs. Her research adopts a relational and community-centred approach, employing qualitative methods to investigate how individual and collective experiences of health and wellbeing are situated within and shaped by intersecting social, cultural, historical, political, economic and environmental contexts. Much of her work focuses on Fiji, where she currently leads an ARC-funded study on infertility and childlessness and directs the social science component of an NHMRC-funded project on reproductive and perinatal health.