Rate My Professor Laura Jobson

Professor Laura Jobson is a Professor in the School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash University. She leads the Culture, Trauma and Mental Health Research Group at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health. A registered clinical psychologist, she earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the Australian National University in 2008 and a Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) from the University of New South Wales. After her PhD, she held positions as Clinical Lecturer and Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. In 2010, she was awarded a prestigious National Institute for Health Research Fellowship, hosted by the University of East Anglia and the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge. She joined Monash University in 2015 as Senior Lecturer and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2021.

Jobson's research program encompasses two main themes: the emotional and cognitive substrates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, with a particular emphasis on cultural influences, and the development of translational interventions. Her work examines how culture shapes autobiographical memory, appraisals, and the self in these disorders, challenging Western-centric models. She conducts cross-country studies with collaborators in Malaysia, Iran, Afghanistan, China, and works with culturally and linguistically diverse communities in Australia, including Indigenous groups. Notable interventions include low-intensity memory training for war-affected adolescents in Afghanistan, funded by the Wellcome Trust. She has authored over 100 publications, including "Effect of the Memory Training for Recovery–Adolescent Intervention on Autobiographical Memory Specificity: A Randomized Clinical Trial" (JAMA Network Open, 2023), "Investigating the associations between cognitive appraisals, trauma memories and PTSD symptoms in Iranian trauma survivors" (Scientific Reports, 2022), "A qualitative study exploring the epistemology of suffering within a Malaysian Indigenous tribe" (Transcultural Psychiatry, 2025), and "Dark Triad Personality Traits and Cyberbullying: The Mediating Role of Emotional Empathy" (Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2025). Her research has been cited over 2,400 times, with an h-index of 26 on Scopus. Awards include the PhD Excellence Award (2008), Trauma Research Award (2007), Istvan Tork Prize in Neuroscience (2002), and Syd Lovibond Prize for Psychology Honours (2002). She serves as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Psychology (since 2022) and has delivered keynotes and invited lectures at international conferences, such as the 40th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (2024) and the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology International Congress (2024).