Dr. Kerrie Noonan is a clinical psychologist and social researcher with interests in the social and cultural experience of caregiving, dying, death, and grief. In particular, the role of formal and informal care within the healthcare and end-of-life systems and how people and communities can build their death and grief literacy. 

 

Kerrie is currently the Director of Research Western NSW Local Health District, including leading the R3 Clinical Trials Enabling Program supporting the development of clinical trials in rural and regional NSW. As Director of the Death Literacy Institute, she works in Australia and internationally on projects supporting the development of death literacy, grief literacy and compassionate communities. She is currently CI on the study reviewing the Death Literacy Index in Australia. Her PhD examining social approaches to death, dying loss and grief won the Dean’s Doctoral Award in 2019. She also holds a master’s in clinical psychology (WSU) and a Graduate Certificate in Business Administration (Griffith University). 

 

She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Public Health Palliative Care Unit at La Trobe University, an Adjunct Research Fellow at Western Sydney University and a visiting Faculty teaching member of the Palliative Care Fellowship Program, Institute of Palliative Medicine, Kerala, India, and St. Christopher’s Hospice, London. She holds various positions in Australia and internationally, including Public Health Palliative Care International, Australian Home Funeral Alliance, International Advisory Group CoCo Compassionate Communities Centre of Expertise, is a member of the Australian Psychological Society and is a Fellow of the APS College of Clinical Psychologists.