Dr Aparna Hebbani is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Memphis. Her research specializes in refugee and migrant settlement issues, encompassing refugee settlement, migrant/refugee family acculturation, identity formation in migrant families, the role of social media, VR, and AI in refugee/migrant settlement, and media representation of minorities. Hebbani is recognized as a media expert with proficiency in intercultural communication, instructional communication, minorities in higher education, nonverbal communication in interviews, and refugee acculturation. She is an affiliate of the Centre for Communication and Social Change.

Hebbani has produced 57 scholarly works between 2004 and 2026, documented in UQ repositories. Key publications include her authored book Refugee settlement in Australia: a holistic overview of current research and practice (Routledge, 2024) and the co-edited Beyond the cities: the dynamics of migrant settlement in regional Australia (Springer, 2026, with Ataus Samad and Nichole Georgeou). Prominent journal articles are Predictors of employment status: a study of former refugee communities in Australia (Australian Psychologist, 2019, with Nigar G. Khawaja, Cindy Gallois, and Mairead MacKinnon), Employment aspirations of former refugees settled in Australia: a mixed methods study (Journal of International Migration and Integration, 2018, with Nigar G. Khawaja), Know thy neighbour: residential integration and social bridging among refugee settlers in Greater Brisbane (Journal of Refugee Studies, 2018, with Val Colic-Peisker and Mairead MacKinnon), Family and domestic violence in culturally and linguistically diverse Australians: A stakeholders' perspective (Australian Journal of Social Issues, 2025, with Nigar G. Khawaja and Agata Vitale), and On arrival: challenges and opportunities around early-stage resettlement of refugees in Australia (Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2025, with Pinyao Song and Dhaval Vyas).

She led a three-year ARC Linkage project from 2013 to 2015 titled Refugees' employment aspirations and inter-generational communication about future occupational pathways, examining employment experiences of newly-arrived refugee families in South East Queensland. Additional grants include UQ Collaboration and Industry Engagement Fund (2011-2013), Sudanese Community Association project (2011), UQ FirstLink Scheme (2010-2011), and UQ New Staff Research Start-Up Fund (2008-2009). Hebbani has supervised several PhD candidates to completion as principal and associate advisor on theses concerning communication, migration, and related fields.

Professional Email: a.hebbani@uq.edu.au