Dr Sean Cowlishaw is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, and the Phoenix Australia Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health. He is also a Honorary Senior Research Fellow with the Bristol Medical School at the University of Bristol.

Sean completed his PhD in psychology at La Trobe University in 2009, which addressed the impacts of occupational and traumatic stressors on families of volunteer emergency service workers. He has since held positions at Monash University (Australia) and Lancaster University (UK), and most recently within the Centre for Academic Primary Care at the University of Bristol (UK). He has been with Phoenix Australia and the University of Melbourne since late 2017.

Sean has primary expertise in gambling problems and addictive behaviours, including treatments and comorbidities, early identification and interventions, as well as industry influences on research. He also has significant research interests and expertise in post-traumatic mental health and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), as well as health services research and high-risk organisations (e.g., military and emergency services). Dr Cowlishaw has been an investigator on competitive and philanthropic grants worth over $7MIL, and is an author on more than 50 publications across areas including addiction, psychiatry and mental health.

Dr Cowlishaw is also an applied statistician and quantitative researcher with methodological expertise in cross-sectional and longitudinal observational studies, randomised designs, as well as systematic reviews. He has experience and expertise with advanced statistical techniques including Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and mixture modelling (e.g., Latent Class Analysis, Growth Mixture Modelling), as well as psychometric analyses based on Item Response Theory and Classical Test Theory. He also has significant interest and involvement in mixed-methods research, and the integration of findings from both quantitative and qualitative research designs.