External research team (CB)

Professor. Julianne Holt-Lunstad is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, and the Director of the Social Neuroscience lab, at Brigham Young University. Prof Holt-Lunstad is also an Adjunct Professor in the Iverson Health Innovation Research Institute at Swinburne University of Technology. Her program of research examines the influence of both the quantity and the quality of social relationships on long-term health and on risk for mortality, and the biological pathways (e.g., cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, genetic) by which such associations may occur. She also considers the potentially detrimental influence of negativity in close relationships (e.g., ambivalence, marital distress). Her work is interdisciplinary and takes a multimethod approach including experimental, naturalistic, meta-analytic, and intervention studies. She is currently evaluating the effectiveness of social interventions aimed at reducing risk. Professor Holt-Lunstad has appeared as an expert in a US Congressional Hearing and provided expert recommendations for the US Surgeon General Emotional Well-Being in America Initiative. She has been awarded the George A. Miller Award from the American Psychological Association, the Mary Lou Fulton Young Scholar Award, the Marjorie Pay Hinkley Endowed Chair Research Award from Brigham Young University, is a Fellow for the Association of Psychological Science, and her work has received considerable national and international media attention.

Dr Lim is a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology and leads the SHAW Laboratory. Dr Lim is interested in how subjective loneliness can negatively impact social functioning and exacerbate mental health symptoms (e.g., social anxiety, depression and paranoia). Her research has focused on reducing loneliness in young people with first episode psychosis and, or social anxiety disorder, as well as older adults. Dr Lim’s interest extend to the development and implementation of personalised mental health, cognitive biases in psychopathology, sub-clinical psychotic symptoms, decision-making and emotion regulation processes.

Dr Lim is a registered clinical psychologist and a board approved supervisor for the Psychology Board of Australia. She currently holds multiple research collaborations with Washington University in St Louis, University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), the University of Melbourne, and Australian Catholic University.

Dr Lim is the chair of the Australian Coalition to End Loneliness scientific advisory committee, which guides Australian charities and government agencies and not-for-profit organisations to deliver evidence-based community messaging and interventions in loneliness.