Professor Renata Kokanović

Renata Kokanović is Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University. She has extensive expertise in interdisciplinary health research, and specialises in narrative research examining health and illness experiences. Renata’s research focuses on the lived experiences of psychiatric diagnoses, disability, and chronic conditions, as well as experiences of informal support and care. She is also interested in diagnostic technologies, health decision-making, experience-based co-production, and digital media in health communication.

Based in the Social and Global Studies Centre, Renata leads the Health, Society and Medicine Research Program which generates critical understandings of lived experience of health and illness in diverse social contexts. Combining empirical research with interdisciplinary theoretical scholarship that has real world relevance, Renata collaborates with a broad range of industry partners and contributes research on health service users’ experiences in the co-design of healthcare and policy improvements. Her most recent work has involved industry collaborations with Healthdirect Australia, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, Mind Australia Limited, Wellways, Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council, Tandem Carers, National Breast Cancer Foundation, Women’s Health Victoria, and Breast Cancer Network Australia.

Renata has authored more than 40 peer-reviewed articles, including in Social Science & Medicine, Sociology of Health & Illness, and Social Theory & Health. She is also co-editor of the collection Paths to Parenthood: Emotions on the Journey through Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Early Parenting, published by Palgrave MacMillan.

For a current list of Renata’s publications see:

Orcid: 0000-0002-4308-3403

Research Gate: Renata Kokanović

Renata leads the Health, Society and Medicine Research Program and co-convenes a network of Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellows and research-focused academics within RMIT’s Social Change Enabling Capability Platform (ECP). She is also member of the Biomedical and Health Innovation, Design & Creative Practice, Urban Futures, and Global Business Innovation ECPs, and co-convenes the RMIT HEALTH network.

Renata is also Adjunct Professor, Patient Experience, Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation (MCHRI), Monash Public Health and Preventative Medicine, Monash University

Renata has received ARC, NHMRC and industry funding for her research. She is currently Chief Investigator on two ARC Linkage Grants (Mental Health and Supported Decision Making: Lived Experience and Carers’ Perspectives and The Intersection of Cancer and Culture: A Sociological Study); and one NHMRC Partnership Project Grant (Early Menopause: Experiences and Perspectives of Women and Health Practitioners).

Renata is Foundation Director of Healthtalk Australia, a research consortium which conducts narrative narrative research in health and illness experiences and uses the findings to produce publicly available digital resources. These resources are tailored to support people experiencing a variety of health conditions and their families and friends, and can also be used as educational tools for health practitioners and to inform policy development.

Research Impact

• Health, Society and Medicine Research Program
• Mental Health and Supported Decision Making
• Mental Health: Carers’ Experiences
• Emotional Experiences of Early Parenthood

Research Group

• Professor Stuart Thomas
• Dr Chris Maylea
• Dr Kate Johnston-Ataata
• Dr Jacinthe Flore
• Dr Anna Urbanowicz
• Dr Nicholas Hill

• PhD, Department of Sociology, Murdoch University, 2002
• BA (Hons), Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Sociology, University of Zagreb, Croatia

Since 2004 Renata has held several research-focused fellowships, including two internationally competitive fellowships. She has led and been involved in national and international cross-disciplinary collaborative research, with colleagues from humanities and health humanities, psychiatry/cultural psychiatry, critical psychology, medicine, cultural studies, health anthropology, narrative health research, health sociology and neuroscience. In addition to her role as Healthtalk Australia Foundation Director, Renata is a Board member of DIPEx International (DI). A collaboration of universities and health research organizations across 13 countries, DI conducts rigorous and systematic qualitative research into people’s experiences of health and illness to inform the production of digital resources.

Renata’s previous positions include:

• Sir John Monash Research Fellow, School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University
• Senior Research Fellow, Mental Health Research Group, Primary Health Care Academic Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne
•  Research Fellow, Centre for International Mental Health, School of Population Health, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne

Editorial and Advisory Appointments

• Director, Healthtalk Australia
• Board Member, DIPEx International
• Associate Editor, Journal of Mental Health
• Associate Editor, BMC Psychiatry
• Member – Research Translation Faculty, NHMRC
• Member – The Enabling Supported Decision Making Committee, Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (Victorian Branch)