Michelle Watson (she/her) is a Research Fellow in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander public health research in the College of Medicine & Public Health at Flinders University. Her research focuses on food insecurity, poverty, food sovereignty, foodways, health equity, and social justice, with a particular emphasis on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contexts. The work is grounded in qualitative and Indigenous Research Methods, prioritising yarning, storytelling, and culturally safe approaches to knowledge generation that centre First Peoples’ voices and knowledge systems.

Her current research activities examine the role of food in strengthening connections to culture, identity, and Country, with a focus on cultivating healing through food sovereignty and first foods. Ongoing projects include the First Foods for First People pilot project and the development of a food sovereignty and food provenance business assessment tool. Across these projects, the work attends to how colonising food systems shape access to food, everyday food practices, and wellbeing, as well as how community-led approaches create space for alternative foodways.

Recent publications reflect this focus. One (unpublished) study, “Food’s what has you connected, food’s what makes you feel healed, food’s a way of connecting it all: Decolonizing the cooking process through the First Foods for First People pilot project” explores the impact of a cooking workshop and first foods box on social and emotional wellbeing among Aboriginal people in southern Adelaide. Using Indigenous Research Methods and analytic frameworks centred on social and emotional wellbeing and foodways, the study highlights the cultural, social, and emotional significance of food and the ongoing effects of colonising foodways.

The Aboriginal & Torres Strait public health research team have recently been awarded an NHMRC Ideas grant to continue this work. "Cultivating First Peoples' healing through food sovereignty and first foods" brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous public health, epidemiology, statistics, nutrition and dietetics researchers and an Indigenous community organisation, Neporendi Aboriginal Forum Inc, in an innovative and respectful partnership to decolonise food knowledges and skills. This project uses Indigenous Research Methodologies (IRM) and a cultural determinants of health (CDH) approach that is novel and strengths-based to answer the question “How can food sovereignty cultivate cultural, social, emotional and physical health and healing among First Peoples?”

Another publication, from Michelle's PhD research, The lived experience of food insecurity in Adelaide, South Australia, investigates pathways into food insecurity and the orthodox and unorthodox practices adults use to acquire food, before and during the COVID‑19 pandemic. Guided by constructivist grounded theory, the study provides detailed accounts of poverty, cumulative life events, and coping strategies, contributing contextual knowledge to debates on food insecurity and social inequity.