Rate My Professor Stefanie Plage

Dr. Stefanie Plage is a Research Fellow with the Life Course Centre at the School of Social Science, University of Queensland. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy from the Centre for Social Research in Health at the University of New South Wales, where her PhD employed a combination of longitudinal qualitative interviews and visual elicitation methods to explore the lived experiences of people with cancer. Plage also completed a Masters by Coursework at the University of Essex. Her expertise centers on qualitative research methods, including longitudinal and visual approaches, as well as the use of NVivo software for data analysis. She has taught introductory and advanced courses in sociology and medical sociology, research design, and qualitative inquiry. Her work adopts a multi-disciplinary perspective, intersecting sociology, health sciences, and social policy.

Plage's research interests include the sociology of emotions, disadvantage, health and illness, health and homelessness, lived experiences of chronic illness and cancer survivorship, and educational inclusion for children with cancer. Her ongoing research examines and seeks to improve interactions between families experiencing social disadvantage and social and health care systems. Key publications encompass her book Health, housing, and homelessness: an ethnographic understanding of housing instability and social care (Routledge, 2025); journal articles such as "Ontological pleasure: Exploring eating as enjoyment among people with experience of homelessness" (Social Science & Medicine, 2025), "Justice in health? Studying the role of legal support in a culturally responsive mental health service in Australia" (Qualitative Health Research, 2025), "Tenant participation to enable the experience of home in social housing" (Housing Studies, 2026), and "Climbing, stalling, falling: how people experiencing housing instability anticipate their futures" (Journal of Sociology, 2024); and book chapters like "Cancer survivorship heroism" (Springer, 2024) and "Housing and energy" (Routledge, 2024). Plage received the UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award and was named the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences winner for UQ Early to Mid-Career Researcher. She supervises several PhD students and holds grants including an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (2026-2028) for end-of-life care among homeless populations.