Lynne Hillier

• PhD
• Associate Professor (adjunct) at La Trobe University

This chapter explores the strong relationship between research and policy for same-sex attracted and gender diverse (SSAGD) youth in Australian education. It outlines the first phases of Australian research on the experiences of SSAGD youth and their corresponding well-being, particularly in school contexts over the past 20 years. It then describes...

Over the last decade, there has been an increase in global and local policy protections on the basis of gender identity and expression in education and a recent spate of coverage of transgender students on Australian television and news media. This paper explores the school experiences of Australian transgender and gender diverse students', with pa...

The recent release of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) booklets, policy, and practice guidance on homophobic bullying in schools represents a distinct shift in how diverse student sexualities are conceptualized in education. Schools are now increasingly addressing the issue of homophobia in official policies...

Purpose: Genital chlamydia infection mainly affects young people and can have long term health consequences. Despite Australian guidelines recommending chlamydia screening for all sexually active young people, testing rates remain low and the epidemic continues to grow. This qualitative study involved interviews with participants from a randomized...

Most religious same-sex attracted and gender questioning (SSAGQ) young people discover their sense of self within contexts in which homonegative truths dominate. Historically this group only had the choice of repressing their identities, hiding them, or leaving their faiths. However, religious change and marriage and education rights movements are...

Tran-spectrum youth include those who are gender questioning, transgender, intersex, genderqueer, and androgynous. Drawing on data from an Australian study of more than 3,000 same-sex-attracted and trans-spectrum youth aged 14 to 21, this article compares a group of 91 trans-spectrum youth from the study to “cisgender” same-sex-attracted peers (who...

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth face special challenges during adolescence including stigma, alienation, and abuse which have been linked with social costs and negative health outcomes. The Internet has been shown to ameliorate the negative impacts of homophobia by providing access to friendships and support, information, romantic partners,...

Education is state-run in Australia, and within each of the eight states and territories there are both government and independent schooling systems. This paper details the position of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (GLBTIQ) students within Australian education policy documents nationally, focusing on the three largest stat...

Results from a national survey of young homeless people aged between 12 and 25 in Australia, revealed a marked contrast between the mainly safe injecting practices and the mainly unsafe sexual practices of a subgroup who injected drugs. This paper offers an analysis of the selfreported sexual and drug injecting behaviours of 178 young people and th...

Teenage pregnancy is typically presented as a problem to be solved, if not as an epidemic in need of urgent intervention. This paper reports on Australian research that examined the phenomenon of teenage motherhood from the perspective of the young women themselves. The theoretical frame of narrative was adopted in order to understand both the way...

Beyond homophobia provides a blueprint aimed at improving the quality of services provided to SSAGQ young people in Victoria. The project was funded by the William Buckland Foundation and managed by the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University with assistance from Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria.

This is the third of the Writing Themselves In national reports which have been conducted six years apart since 1998. In 2010, a total of 3134 same sex attracted and gender questioning (SSAGQ) young people participated in Writing Themselves In 3 (WTi3), almost double the number in 2004 and more than four times that of 1998. The participants, who we...

Sex education is a contested site in the school curriculum as communities grapple with who should teach young people about sex and how it should be taught. In this paper we ask whether same‐sex‐attracted young people are being exposed to appropriate and relevant sex education at school, and if they are not whether it is necessary that sex education...

Young people (16-25 years) are a target group for the prevention of Chlamydia trachomatis in the Australian national STI strategy. This study is a randomized controlled trial of an innovative internet-based intervention which aims to increase Chlamydia testing and treatment among at risk young people living in Australia. Study participation is via...

The internet has met with mixed community reactions, especially when the focus is on young people's internet use. There are those who fear that the internet will introduce undesirable people and information into the home, leaving the young vulnerable and exploited. Alternatively, there are others who argue that the exclusion of young people from th...

Acknowledgments A number of people had input into this project. I would like to acknowledge the work of University of Melbourne Health Psychology Doctorate students who gave time to this project while on placements at ARCSHS. They are Hunter Mulcare, Netz Goren and Jessica Ross. Thank you also to the facilitators of support groups and the young peo...

Like many other people in our communities who have found themselves on the margins of society, people with intellectual disabilities have long been subject to research which sought to assess, categorise, predict and control their lives and behaviour (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999; Walmsley and Johnson, 2003). It is only relatively recently that they have beg...

Young people are one of the most regularly researched populations, particularly in the area of health and well-being. Much of this research on young people has, in recent years, focused on identifying those individual and group-based behaviours and practices that place them at risk of harm. Many researchers, reflecting the needs of policymakers and...

This paper explores the lived experience of women with disabilities in relation to preventative health. It is based on qualitative research in Australia involving 25 individual interviews and 4 focus groups with women with disabilities about their experience of cervical screening (Pap tests), 16 interviews and 2 focus groups with service providers...

Research among same-sex attracted young people in Western cultures has described a minority group of adolescents whose sexuality is negated by the significant institutions and people in their lives. Very often, there is a silence in the family and at school about same-sex sexuality and when a young person's homosexuality is suspected or disclosed s...

In spite of changes in the way people with learning disabilities are perceived, issues of sexuality and personal relationships remain particularly problematic for them. Living Safer Sexual Lives1 was a three-year Australian action research project which sought to address how people with learning disabilities view these issues. During the first stag...

This chapter discusses communication with parents, same-sex attraction, coming out, and adolescent sexuality.

Disability and the Life Course, first published in 2001, explores the global experience of disability using a novel life course approach. The book explores how disabling societies impact on disabled people's life experiences, and highlights the ways in which disabled people have acted to take more control over their own lives. It provides a unique...

This paper seeks to import a more complex understanding of gendered subjectivity into discussions of young people and homosexuality, and is based on an Australian national survey (n=749) of same-sex attracted youth (SSAY) aged between 14 and 21. Results revealed significant gender differences with regard to patterns of sexual attraction, behaviour...

This article reports on qualitative and quantitative research, conducted with senior secondary school students in small rural Australian towns, which explored the meanings of sex and relationships. Through a survey, the researchers identified the many ways in which these young people construct meanings around sex and sexuality and, combined with th...

Though it is recognised that a sound knowledge of HIV/STD transmission is insufficient on its own to ensure that young people practise safer sex, knowledge of this sort is a necessary prerequisite to safe sex behaviours. Research on the HIV/STD knowledge levels of young people has shown that, while they have high levels of HIV knowledge, they gener...

With the advent of HIV, sexual health campaigns and formal sex education in schools have worked to instil the concept of safe sex into the collective minds of Australia's youth. However the concept in its present guise is a fairly limited one. We argue in this paper that the predominant emphasis in education programmes on safe sex as condom use may...

Survey and focus group discussions examining sexual health issues for young people were conducted with 1168 year 8 and year 10 secondary school students living in small rural communities across Australia. Growing up in the country was generally perceived as a positive experience; however, many young people felt that they had little privacy. Two mai...

This study examines the importance of observer characteristics in determining blame in cases of wife assault. Four independent variables (observer's attitudes toward sex roles, observer sex and age, and victim behavior) were assessed for their influence on the blaming judgments of 128 participants. Subjects completed a questionnaire that contained...

This study examined the predictors of dieting, extreme weight loss behaviors, and binge eating in adolescents (606 females and 315 males). High school classes were administered measures of weight loss behaviors, binge eating, perceived current and ideal body size, body dissatisfaction, advantages of being thinner and physically fitter, satisfaction...

Body image and weight loss beliefs and behaviors were assessed in 341 female and 221 male high school students. Estimates of body dissatisfaction varied depending on the measurement strategy used. Despite having similar weight distributions around the expected norm, girls were significantly more dissatisfied with their bodies than boys. Body Mass I...

The Christian Church 1 has remained relatively stalwart in its opposition to homosexuality despite other mainstream institutions such as the legal system and psychiatry recanting ear- lier homophobic and heterosexist positions. This rejection of homosexuality has a particu- larly negative impact on the lives of young same sex attracted young people...