Natalie Jovanovski

Dr Natalie Jovanovski is a Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow in the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences and Social Equity Research Centre (SERC). As a health sociologist, Natalie's work explores the sociocultural factors that shape people's relationships with food and their bodies, especially women. 

She has published her work in high-quality books, edited collections, and Q1 journals, such as Body Image, Health Sociology Review, Critical Public Health, and Social Movement Studies. Her first monograph, Digesting Femininities: The Feminist Politics of Contemporary Food Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), won the TASA Raewyn Connell Prize in 2018. Her second monograph, Diet Culture and Counterculture: Self and Society in the Anti-Diet Movement, was published in 2024 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). 

Awarded a prestigious Australian Research Council (ARC) Disocovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) in 2020, Natalie explored the notion of a 'diet culture', and how everyday women, activists, and health professionals challenge the normalisation of dieting in the West. Using Bourdieu's theory of practice, she concluded that a variety of care practices are used by women across groups to challenge the diet habitus. 

More recently, Natalie's Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Fellowship explores the meaning of 'healthy eating', speaking to various 'at-risk' groups, health professionals, and other key stakeholders with the aim of better contextualising the healthy eating guidelines. This project draws on Bourdieusian theories as well as Ulrich Beck's notion of a 'risk society'. 

Natalie is also currently Chief Investigator on a $5m Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) project, seeking to improve the lives of people living with Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19, or Long-COVID. Using experience-based co-design methodologies, this project is led by Professor Catherine Itsiopoulos (Dean - School of Health and Biomedical Sciences), in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of researchers. 

Natalie is currently (2024) serving as co-editor of a special edition of Health Sociology Review exploring 'Healthy' Food Practices, and well as co-editor on an upcoming edited collection entitled Social Justice in Public Health (Chenhall, Senior & Jovanovski; Routledge, forthcoming). Previously, Natalie has been section editor of the Handbook of the History of Human Sciences (D. McCallum, ed., Palgrave Macmillan), and Associate Editor of the Journal of Family Studies. 

At RMIT, Natalie co-leads the Food Cultures and Practices Enabling Impact Network; an interdisciplinary nexus at RMIT, uniting food researchers and industry partners in social policy, sustainability, health, and manufacturing. Natalie is also the thematic lead of 'Consumption, Bodies and Social Practices' in the Social Practices and Sustainable Consumption (SPSC) Enabling Impact Network.