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Doctor Ashleigh Stewart

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Background

Ashleigh has worked at the Burnet Institute since 2017 and is a public health epidemiologist and post-doctoral research fellow. Ashleigh works across the Disease Elimination and Harm and Risk Reduction at the Burnet. Her research focuses on viral hepatitis elimination among people with HIV and drug-related harms among people who inject drugs. Ashleigh specialises in longitudinal data and linked administrative data analysis. 

In 2022–2023, Ashleigh was appointed as a research fellow at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, working in collaboration with the UN Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions. Her work was related to monitoring and preventing deaths in custody. 

Ashleigh completed her PhD at the Burnet Institute in 2022, where she explored mental health morbidity and service access among men leaving prison who reported a history of injecting drug use. Ashleigh also has a background in clinical nursing working as a registered nurse, specialising in mental health.

Key research interests include: infectious disease epidemiology, hepatitis C elimination, injecting drug use, drug-related harms, supervised injecting rooms, women’s health.

Qualifications
  • 2022: PhD, Monash university, Melbourne, Australia
  • 2016: Master of Public Health, University of Melbourne, Australia
  • 2013: Bachelor of Nursing, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia 
Appointments
  • 2022: Department of Forensic Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
  • 2022: Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, Melbourne, Australia  
Awards
  • 2025: Jim and Margaret Beever Fellowship
  • 2024: Harold Mitchell Foundation Postdoctoral Travel Fellowship 
  • 2022: Dora Lush Academic Excellence Award 2022
  • 2022: International AIDS Conference, IAS/MSD Prize for Research in HIV Prevention: Annual prize
  • 2021: Hon Geoffrey Connard Travel Fellowship
  • 2020: Australasian Professionals Society on Alcohol and Other Drugs Webinar Series, Rapid Presentation People’s Choice Award.
  • 2020: Burnet Institute Student Symposium, Best Poster Presentation Award
  • 2020: Burnet Institute Student Symposium, People’s Choice Award