Dr Julia McCartan is an Accredited Practising Dietitian and lecturer in the Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences (MNHS). In 2016, together with colleague Dr Liza Barbour, Julia designed and continues to teach a compulsory undergraduate unit NUT3006: Food Sustainability Systems. Since 2016, she has represented Nutrition, Dietetics and Food on the MNHS Indigenous Health Equity Eduction Committee.

Julia is also a Research Fellow for the Monash Centre for Scholarship in Health Education. She works in partnership with the Monash Gukwonderuk Indigenous Health Unit to support research and evaluation of Indigenous health equity curriculum across the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. She is also applying critical methodological and pedagogical approaches in health professions and health sciences education, with a particular research interest in fostering critical reflexivity and critical allyship skills in health professions educators, students and graduates.

Julia began at Monash University in 2013 as a research officer for a three-year longitudinal study of food cost across Victorian communities. She brings practice experience in public health nutrition, health promotion project management and food systems research to her Monash roles. Over her professional career which spans two decades, she has worked in the community health, local government, non-government and higher education sectors in metropolitan and regional Victoria, Central Australia, Sydney and the Kingdom of Tonga.

Julia's doctoral research utilised critical inqury to investigate non-Indigenous people's power and positioning in Indigenous contexts, illustrating examples from academia, policymaking, the food industry and health professional practice.

Julia's diverse research interests include: 

• Critical pedagogy and methodology 
• Settler colonialism and anti-racism
• Food system sustainability
• Health equity 
• Health professions education 
• Household food insecurity 
• Food cost and affordability