Miranda Van Hooff

Associate Professor Van Hooff is a dynamic and values-driven research and evaluation expert, passionately committed to enhancing the mental health and wellbeing of veterans, emergency service personnel and their families. She has over 25 years of research experience in trauma and mental health; 15 years specifically focused on the mental health and well-being of current and transitioned ADF members and their families. Having successfully led and managed multiple large-scale, multi-institute research consortiums throughout her career, Associate Professor Van Hooff excels in developing and executing comprehensive research strategies that align with organizational and funding objectives. With a keen ability to analyse complex information and synthesize data, she employs evidence-based approaches to foster innovation and achieve impactful, measurable outcomes.

Career Summary:

Associate Professor Van Hooff holds an adjunct Associate Professor role with the University of Adelaide and is the Military Families Research Lead at Gallipoli Medical Research. She completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honours Psychology) in 1998 and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine at The University of Adelaide in 2010 for her research examining the adult mental and physical health outcomes of childhood disaster exposure. Over the last 15 years, Associate Professor Van Hooff has held several senior leadership roles in the veteran mental health sector. From 2019 to 2024 she was the Executive Director of one of South Australia's largest research centres (www.mesha.org.au) with a specific focus on the delivery of Research, Programs and Training for current and former Military and Emergency Service personnel and their families. Prior to this she was the Director of Research at the Centre for of Traumatic Stress Studies, the University of Adelaide's specialist veteran health research centre. Miranda is currently the Acting Chair of the South Australian Veterans Advisory Council, an advisory committee to the South Australian Minister of Veterans Affairs and has spent the last two years as an advisor to the Royal Commission into Military and Veteran Suicide as a member of the Lived Experience and Research Advisory Committee. In 2019 she founded the Services Families Research Consortium, a network of national and international research and service delivery experts on military families, which meet quarterly.

Grants and Funding:

Dr Van Hooff has received competitive research grant funding of over $10.5M since 2013. This includes contract research funding the Australian Government Departments of Defence and Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) as well as competitive grant funding from The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) (including a current $5M MRFF – Million Minds Mental health Research Mission Grant), the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, The Hospital Research Foundation, The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, and Defence Health Foundation.

Collaborations:

Dr Van Hooff’s excellent history of NHMRC, Cat 2 and contract research funding has involved widespread and long-standing collaboration with numerous external stakeholders including DVA, the Department of Defence, the SA Metropolitan Fire Service, The Road Home, the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, See Differently, Curtin University (WA), University of New England, University of South Australia, Federation University Australia, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and Flinders University. As the Principal investigator of the $4.9M Transition and Wellbeing Research Programme (2015-2019) she managed a consortium of 3 commonwealth agencies (DVA, Defence and The Australian Institute of Family Studies) and 4 academic institutions (Phoenix Australia, University of Melbourne; University of New South Wales; Monash University; Innowell, University of Sydney) to examine the impact of contemporary military service on the mental, physical and social health of serving and ex-serving ADF personnel and their families. She was also a member of the 5 Eyes Mental Health Research and Innovation Collaborative (5 Eyes MHRIC): a collaboration of mental health researchers in Canada, Australia, the US, the UK, and New Zealand that strives to have a demonstrable impact on improving mental health outcomes for past and present military personnel and their families.

Community engagement and participation:

Associate Professor Van Hooff has been an invited guest and keynote speaker at numerous national conferences and meetings, has delivered multiple radio and TV interviews in relation to her research and has briefed the Prime Ministers Advisory Council on Veterans’ mental health on multiple occasions. She was also a key expert witness on South Australia’s first successful stolen generation case (Trevorrow vs South Australia) providing evidence of concerning the State of knowledge of child psychological/psychiatric matters in the period 1957/58 to 1968, in particular training received by medical practitioners during this time and available literature on attachment and the detrimental effects of maternal deprivation.

Professional/Academic Contribution:

Throughout her research career, Associate Professor Van Hooff has authored 85 journal articles, 2 book chapters and 42 government reports, which have been cited over 2.3k times. She has contributed to over 50 conference presentations both nationally and internationally, including multiple invited keynote presentations. Over the course of her career, Associate Professor Van Hooff has conducted several large-scale population based longitudinal mental health studies including studies of childhood survivors of the 1983 Ash Wednesday Bushfires (now in its 40th year); adults who had been hospitalised for a significant burn injury in childhood, adults exposed to the neurotoxic effects of lead in childhood, adults exposed to the 2006 Black Tuesday Bushfires, Australian emergency service personnel exposed to the 2019-2020 Bushfires in Australia. Since 2009, her research has focused on the mental health of current and ex-serving Australian military and emergency service personnel, as a lead researcher/research manager on the Transition and Wellbeing Research Programme (Lead), The Military Health Outcomes Programme (Research Manager) and the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service Health and Wellbeing Study (Research Manager). These studies were the first in Australia to ascertain the prevalence of ICD-10 Mental Disorder in current and ex-serving ADF members and South Australian Firefighters and have been strong drivers of change in relation to policy and service provision. She is the principal researcher on the largest and longest Australian study to examine the impacts of PTSD assistance dogs on veterans and emergency service personnel members and is currently an investigator on a 5 year $5M MRFF funded research funded program lead by the University of New England to examine a community based mental well-being and preparedness program for fire, drought and extreme weather events. Over the past 5 years she become one of Australia’s leading researchers on the health and wellbeing military and emergency families examining: the impacts of PTSD assistance dogs on Australian military families; the experiences and role of families in improving help-seeking for veterans and emergency service personnel with current or emerging health needs; experiences of Parental PTSD for children aged 9-17 in military and first responder families; experiences of family members of emergency first responders with PTSD, the health and wellbeing spillover effects of informal care in veteran families and the strengths and needs of Australian families transitioning from military to civilian life.

Supervision/mentoring:
Associate Professor Van Hooff has 6 PhD completions (3, primary supervisor, 3 co-supervisor), 3 current PhD students (2 primary supervisor, 1 co-supervisor), 11 Masters completions (6 primary supervisor, 5 co-supervisor), 5 Honours Completions (4 co-supervisor; 1 primary), 1 current Honours student (co-supervisor).