Dr. Vasileios Stavropoulos
Details
College: School of Health and Biomedical Sciences
Department: Health and Biomedical Sciences
Campus: Bundoora West Australia
vasileios.stavropoulos@rmit.edu.au
Open to
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
- Career advice
- Collaborative projects
- Media enquiries
- Mentoring (long-term)
- Industry Projects
About
Vasileios Stavropoulos is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology and Associate Dean, Higher Degree by Research, in RMIT's School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, where he leads the Digital Minds Research Group. A clinical psychologist, he asks why, when and for whom digital engagement becomes beneficial or harmful across development, integrating longitudinal cohort science, psychometrics and artificial intelligence. His Cyber-Developmental Framework (European Psychologist, 2022) shifted the question from "how much screen time?" to how the person, offline context, digital context and developmental stage interact.
He has 167 Scopus-indexed outputs (64% in Q1 journals; 26% in the global top 10% most cited; FWCI 1.95) and 8,300+ Google Scholar citations (h-index 49; October 2026). SciVal ranks him 10th worldwide and 3rd in Australia in Internet Addiction & Behavioral Disorders, and 2nd in Australia in Measurement Invariance & Factor Analysis. His work is cited in 47 policy documents across 12 countries. In 2026 he was named in the Stanford University–Elsevier list of the world's top 2% of scientists (August 2026 update).
He is a former ARC DECRA Fellow (DE210101107), a 2022 Victorian Tall Poppy, and received the 2025 Dean's Industry Engagement Commendation. His funded work spans the ARC, Movember, National Industry PhD and industry co-funded scholarships, and international programs in Norway and the Czech Republic (combined portfolio exceeding A$11.9M as lead and Associate Investigator). He has supervised more than 20 PhD candidates (9 completed). As Associate Dean HDR he oversees more than 200 candidates across 11 disciplines and has grown industry-linked HDR enrolments from 10 to more than 40.
He is a leading member of the ISSBD Artificial Intelligence Working Group and contributes to the APA DSM-5 Internet Gaming Disorder taskforce and the WHO Knowledge Community on Digital Mental Health Technologies Regulation. He holds editorial roles with four Q1 journals and co-founded the Australian Games and Screens Alliance (AGASA) and the Australasian Cyberpsychology Research Network (ACORN). His translation work has trained 2,700+ practitioners and reached 55,000+ people.
Media
Research fields
- 461199 Machine learning not elsewhere classified
- 490508 Statistical data science
- 520199 Applied and developmental psychology not elsewhere classified
Non-academic positions
- Clinical Psychologist
- Self-Employed
- Melbourne, Australia
- 2014 – Present
Supervisor projects
- Contemporary, Trauma-Responsive HR Leadership as a determining factor in Psychological Safe workplaces
- 25 Jun 2026
- Self-Presentation or Self-Preservation: Fashioning Identity and Community Among Second-Generation Immigrants
- 1 Apr 2026
- Digital Phenotyping
- 20 Feb 2026
- Decoding the Longitudinal Links Between Conduct Disorder Symptoms and Gaming Involvement: Evidence from the ABCD Study
- 13 Feb 2026
- Digital Immersion and Disordered Gaming
- 17 Dec 2025
- : Social Media Cyber-Phenotyping: A Text Mining Approach
- 28 May 2025
- School Attendance Problems: Definitions, Patterns, & System-Level Implications
- 13 Mar 2025
- Digital Phenotype implications: Decoding the digital footprint of behaviors that indicate problematic gaming behaviors
- 8 Oct 2024
- Excessive Social Media Usage and its association with Neurobiological changes
- 11 Dec 2023
- Balancing Between Internet Use Risks and Opportunities: A Multimodal Perspective
- 5 Jun 2023
- Digital Worlds and Altered Sense of Reality: Associations with Mental Health Across Media, Gaming, and Avatars
- 5 Jun 2023
- Online Flow: Individual Differences Regarding One's Absorbance by their Gaming Activity and their Translation to Real Life Information
- 5 Jun 2023
- Unveiling Health Insights: Exploring the Link Between Virtual Engagement and Real-World Well-being
- 1 Jun 2023
- Gaming, Identity, and Health: The Role of the User-Avatar Bond and Proteus Effect in Shaping Physical and Mental Health Behaviours
- 31 May 2023
- Digital Media and Behavioural Addiction: Where does use become Problematic?
- 31 May 2023
Teaching interests
Foundations of Practice 1 — 12 credit points — BESC1461
Assessment and Intervention 1 — 12 credit points — BESC1459
Assessment and Intervention 2 — 12 credit points — BESC1460
Thesis I — 12 credit points — BESC1244
Thesis 2 — (details per program guide)
Research interests
Developmental digital wellbeing: Why, when and for whom gaming, social media and AI use support or undermine young people’s wellbeing, through a cyber-developmental lens (person × offline context × digital context × developmental stage).
Years and moments: Linking slow developmental change in large international longitudinal cohorts with fast, moment-to-moment digital experience captured through intensive and objective measures.
Making the digital environment measurable: Moving beyond self-reported screen time to digital traces, device and platform data, and changing digital eras.
Natural language processing (NLP): Analysing social media discourse, online communities and conversations with AI to detect indicators of vulnerability, risk and resilience at scale.
Human–AI interaction: How young people’s use of generative AI and conversational agents relates to wellbeing, vulnerability and resilience over time.
Measurement that travels: Psychometrics, measurement invariance and IRT across ages, cultures, languages and platforms, and cross-cohort harmonisation.
Person-centred and computational methods: Latent profiles and trajectories, network models and interpretable machine learning, used where they add explanatory or predictive value.
Translation and capacity building: Evidence that informs families, schools, clinicians, platforms and policy beyond age-only thresholds, and HDR training that combines clinical insight with data science and industry partnership.
