Associate Professor Katie Attwell

Dr Katie Attwell is an Associate Professor with the UWA School of Social Sciences. She is a political science and public policy scholar with global expertise in vaccine hesitancy and policies for childhood and COVID-19 vaccines. Katie has led community, policy, and behavioural research in vaccination uptake since 2014, the year of her ground-breaking “I Immunise” campaign to address alternative lifestyle-based vaccine hesitancy in Fremantle. 

Katie grew up in the City of Rockingham, Western Australia, as the child of two teachers. Growing up, Katie pursued a career in music in Perth’s underground music scene of the 1990s. During her undergraduate degree, she decided that a career as a lecturer of political science would be a good ‘Plan B’. Katie juggled her passion for music with travel and raising a family, while completing her higher degree studies.

Katie specialises in mandatory vaccination policy across Australia, Europe, and The United States of America, researching the tactics their governments use to motivate people to vaccinate, how policies make it to the agenda, how they are designed, how they differ, and how they work. She recently completed an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA: 2019-2022). She leads a large program of work supporting a collection of researchers working on vaccine uptake and policy issues through her VaxPolLab, and is the Chair of the Collaboration on Immunisation and Social Science (COSSI).

Katie contributed expertise nationally and globally through during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout numerous academic and government forums and via the media. She continues to lead the mixed methods, multidisciplinary project “Coronavax: Preparing Community and Government”.

Katie’s work allows her to travel to amazing places interviewing those who are central to introducing and implementing vaccination policies. The COVID-19 pandemic cemented her key interest in the role of the state in shaping vaccine uptake and acceptance.

Qualifications:

• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Murdoch University, 2013
• Bachelor of Arts (BA) (Hons), Murdoch University, 2005
• Bachelor of Arts (BA), Murdoch University, 2001

External positions

• Honorary Fellow of the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases, Telethon Kids Institute 
• Visiting Fellow, Vaccines and Society Unit, Oxford University