Dr Victoria Palmer, University of Melbourne

Dr Victoria Palmer has a PhD in applied ethics. Her thesis examined the concept of ethical communities and how people engaged in cooperative activities can maintain their commitments to alternative values and principles when the dominant worldview is at odds with their own. For that work she completed a narrative analysis using Hilde Nelson's counterstories and master narrative theory.

Victoria is a qualitative researcher within the mental health program at the Primary Care Research Unit, Department of General Practice at The University of Melbourne, Australia. She joined the PCRU in 2007 to work on the re-order study: re-organising care for depression and related disorders in the Australian Primary Health Care Setting. During that time she participated in a narrative review and synthesis of the place of generalism in the 2020 Primary Care Team.

With research specialty in narrative analysis, she is also interested in theories of embodiment, identity and how individual illness and disorder disrupts communal belonging. She has a special interest in anxiety and panic disorders and the application of philosophical and ethical theories to practice problems in primary care.

Victoria has previously worked in local government, as a case worker in domestic and family violence, disability support including teaching in the higher education sector. She holds two grants: to develop a pilot intervention that can improve community coordination, access and networks (I-CCAaN) for primary care for people with co-existing chronic physical illnesses and depression; and to explore 'arranging generalism' as a philosophy of primary medical care.