Virginia Schmied

Virginia Schmied is Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery and the Family and Community Health (FaCH) research group. She is a registered midwife and a registered nurse with experience extends across clinical practice, education, research and consultancy. Professor Schmied has worked in other tertiary institutions and as a senior manager in the public sector. She holds a Visiting Professorship at University of Central Lancashire (UK) and an Adjunct Professorship at the University of Technology, Sydney. Professor Schmied is a leading Australian researcher in midwifery and child and family health. Her program of scholarship, teaching and research is grounded in social science theory and methods and focuses on transition to motherhood, perinatal mental health, breastfeeding and infant feeding decisions, postnatal care, effective models to support vulnerable families, family centered care in NICU, strengthening the universal health services for families and children and the role of the child and family health nurse. In addition she works with colleagues to research strategies to facilitate normal birth including studies on obesity in childbirth, physiological birth positions and place of birth. Professor Schmied is currently supervising 11 higher degree students in these areas She has published over 80 refereed journal articles, book chapters and published reports and regularly presents (including as a key note speaker) at national and international conferences. Professor Schmied has recently completed two ARC linkage study and is currently an investigator on two other ARC linkage projects and an ARC discovery grant (Miller Early Childhood Sustained Nurse Home Visiting) and has previously held ARC and NHMRC grants. Her research has been translated to policy and practice. For example, the findings of infant feeding research have been translated and disseminated in teaching resources for health professionals (training manual for antenatal educators and bilingual parent educators) as well as resources for parents (eg Breastfeeding and You DVD; information translated into several languages on infant feeding) She is particularly skilled in building collaborative teams and has used opportunities for seed funding to grow a teams / networks, to publish findings and reports and then to apply for competitive funding.