Rate My Professor Belinda Liddell

Professor Belinda Liddell holds the Daphne Keats Chair in Cross-Cultural Psychology in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Newcastle, appointed in 2024. She earned a Doctor of Philosophy and a Bachelor of Psychology with First Class Honours from the University of Sydney. Prior to her current role, she was Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales, where she founded the Refugee Trauma and Recovery Program and serves as Deputy Director. She maintains an Adjunct Professor appointment at UNSW until 2027. Liddell's research examines the cultural, psychological, social, and biological mechanisms underlying mental health outcomes from trauma, forced migration, and settlement stressors in refugee and migrant populations. Her interests encompass human rights violations such as torture, post-migration challenges including visa insecurity, family separation, discrimination, and acculturation, as well as cultural variations in trauma responses like posttraumatic stress disorder. Utilizing neuroimaging, experimental psychology, longitudinal studies, and qualitative methods, her studies reveal impacts such as torture modulating cognitive control networks and visa insecurity disrupting default mode network connectivity. Key publications include 'Torture Exposure Modulates Cognitive Control and Attention Neural Network Connectivity During a Go/NoGo Task' (2024, Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging), 'Self-construal modulates default mode network connectivity in refugees with PTSD' (2024, Journal of Affective Disorders), 'The Longitudinal Association Between Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Emotion Dysregulation, and Postmigration Stressors Among Refugees' (2024, Clinical Psychological Science), and the highly cited 'The relationship between post-migration stress and psychological disorders in refugees and asylum seekers' (2016, Current Psychiatry Reports).

Liddell collaborates with organizations including the Australian Red Cross, NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors, and the International Committee of the Red Cross to translate findings into policy and practice. Her work advances culturally informed interventions and resilience strategies for humanitarian settings. In 2025, she received an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship valued at $1,285,428 for the project 'Understanding how forced separation disrupts wellbeing of refugee people,' combining laboratory research, longitudinal case studies, and community engagement to develop evidence-based psychological support. Earlier contributions include pioneering neuroimaging of refugee trauma effects on the brain.