Research leaders

Associate Professor Magenta Simmons is a Principal Research Fellow. She leads Orygen’s Youth Involvement Research, which includes research into shared decision making, peer support and the involvement of young people with lived and living experience.

Magenta’s work is dedicated to redressing the historical exclusion of young people from making decisions about their own mental health care, the mental health workforce and active partners or leaders in research.

Magenta leads a range of research studies, including:

• Evaluating remotely delivered peer support, family peer support, vocational peer support.
• Supporting the youth and family peer workforces.
• Exploring how young people want to contribute as experts to mental health research activities.
• The development of a new measure, which will be used to evaluate a novel service for trans and gender diverse young people who come from other historically marginalised backgrounds.

In addition to generating new knowledge through research, she continues to develop a range of resources to translate this knowledge into policy and practice.

Magenta works closely with Orygen’s Youth Participation and Engagement team to provide career opportunities and pathways for young people passionate about youth mental health.

Additionally, she is a member of the Executive of the International Association for Youth Mental Health and has served as an expert on a number of local and international committees.