Dr Karla Elliott is a Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Sciences, Monash University. She is a gender scholar with expertise in the intersections of gender with social and health inequalities (including disability, social class, sexuality and race), men and masculinities, migrant and refugee communities in Australia, family violence, and young people. Her work addresses pressing societal, health and cultural concerns such as increasing gender equality, working with men and boys, fostering ‘caring masculinities’, enhancing social inclusion, tackling family violence and harnessing digital technologies for social good. She obtained her PhD in Sociology from Monash University, and has previously worked as a Research Fellow with the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre (2018) and the Centre for Health Equity, University of Melbourne (2019).

Karla is currently working on Australian Research Council funded projects on men working in low-paid occupations in Australia's Healthcare and Social Assistance Sector (DP220103315) and on alcohol consumption practices in times of crisis (SR200200364). She has been a co-Chief Investigator on award-winning research on men’s ‘risky’ drinking funded by VicHealth, as well as a current project evaluating gender transformative and healthy masculinities programs in Victoria, Australia. She has also been a key researcher on projects on Adolescent Family Violence with the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, and on an evaluation of family violence primary prevention programs in multicultural and refugee communities in Victoria with the Centre for Health Equity, University of Melbourne. Her research has been published in esteemed international journals such as British Journal of Sociology; Gender, Work & Organization; Men and Masculinities; and Qualitative Research, and her first book Young Men Navigating Contemporary Masculinities was published by Palgrave in 2020. Her theorisation of ‘caring masculinities’, published in 2016, has been a particularly notable contribution, and won The Australian Sociological Association’s 2018 Most Distinguished Peer-Reviewed Article Published by an Early Career Researcher Award

Karla is primarily a qualitative researcher with expertise in narrative research, interviewing and focus group methodologies, and digital methods, as well as in evaluations of complex community-based programs and interventions. She also incorporates quantitative methods into her research to assess attitudinal and knowledge change, particularly in relation to gender equality.