Rate My Professor Jess Gillies

Dr. Jess Gillies is a Lecturer and Research Fellow in the Discipline of Psychology, Faculty of Health at Southern Cross University in Coffs Harbour, Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Psychological Science (BPsychSc) from Southern Cross University in 2015, First Class Honours from the same institution in 2016, and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) conferred in 2024 from the University of Sydney in the field of human trafficking. Her career includes roles as a casual academic and PhD candidate in Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney from 2017 to 2023, and as a researcher at Jetty Research Pty Ltd from 2014 to 2017, where she conducted phone interviews and face-to-face surveys using Plenari CATI and SurveyPro, supervised call centre operations, performed data entry and coding, set up phone databases, and analyzed data with SPSS, Excel, and PowerPoint. Gillies is recognized as a Fellow and Associate Fellow (Indigenous Knowledges) in the SCU Fellowship Community within the Faculty of Health. In 2016, she received the Wendy Martin Education Encouragement Award from Southern Cross University. Identifying with Gamilaraay mob on Gumbaynggirr Country, she uses she/her pronouns and serves as a First Nations ally.

Dr. Gillies' research specializations center on the nexus of socioeconomic influences and cultural expectations of women in the Asia Pacific region, viewed through an intersectional feminist lens incorporating United Nations guiding principles and Sustainable Development Goals. Her academic interests include women's agency, gender, culture, social and global mobility; post-trafficking support services for women with lived experiences or like-trafficking in Australia and Thailand; barriers and facilitators to social mobility via higher education in Australian universities; dissociative symptoms and camouflaging in clinical populations with high autistic traits; and precarious perceptions of men and masculinity. Key publications comprise 'Three Men Walk into a Karaoke Bar, a Politician, a Religious Leader, and a Billionaire: Hidden Drivers of the Anti-Trafficking Agenda' in the Journal of Human Trafficking (2025), her PhD thesis 'Post-Trafficking Support for Women with Lived-Experiences of or Like-Trafficking: An exploration of government and non-government services in Australia and Thailand' (2023), 'Show us your manhood! Precarious perceptions of men and masculinity' in Frontiers in Public Health (2016), and the poster presentation 'Unmasking the Self: Investigating Dissociative Symptoms and Their Relationship to Camouflaging in a Clinical Population with High Autistic-Traits' (2025). She has presented papers throughout the Asia Pacific region and Europe to promote long-term structural changes for women's agency and social and global mobility.