DrKris Vingrys

As a member of Deakin's Institute for Health Transformation (IHT) my research broadly focusses on public health and nutrition, with special interests in Aboriginal dietary practices and placemaking, critical allyship and cultural safety, nutrition and cancer, and cultural and socio-ecological factors in supporting health outcomes. I enjoy collaborative and interdisciplinary research and I welcome enquiries from prospective research partners or postgraduate research students if you have project ideas that match our research interests and specialisations.

Specialist interests and skills: Public health and community nutrition; Aboriginal research methods; nutrition epidemiology; nutrition and cancer; individual participant data meta-analysis; systematic reviews and scoping reviews; first-year tertiary pedagogy.

As Chief Investigator of a funded project through an Impact Research Grant from the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), I am working in solidarity with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers in a project for 'Aboriginal Australian dietary practices and place-making in public health equity' (2023-25), co-designed with Moondani Balluk at Victoria University and community partners on Kulin Nation lands. 

In my role as Honorary Research Fellow with Cancer Council Victoria, was previously leading nutrition epidemiology studies investigating the association between dietary polyphenols and cancer risk in a Melbourne-based prospective cohort. Internationally, my research explores unmet nutrition-related needs in cancer survivorship, and in another project predictors and associations of dietary inflammation and adiposity outcomes in European children. 

My research interests in higher education include leading the development of an Open Education Resource for interdisciplinary health students, use of Interactive Oral Assessments, feedback literacy, experiential learning, and the use of artificial intelligence as teaching and learning tools.


Summary of current research programs:

1. Aboriginal Australian dietary practices and place-making in public health equity (2023-25),
VicHealth Impact Research Grant $230,000.

2. Nutrition and cancer (2021-2025),
Chief Investigator and Honorary Research Fellow: Cancer Council Victoria (2023-2025):
Cancer incidence and polyphenols
Chief Investigator: Nutrition-related unmet needs in colorectal cancer survivorship

3. Dietary inflammation & adiposity in European children (2022-24)
Collaboration with University College Dublin and the ALPHABET consortium,
6 birth cohorts in the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands, and Poland

4. Teaching and learning pedagogy (2022-25)

Cultural safety in health promotion education
Open Education Resources for health students
Interactive Oral Assessments for health and education

Feedback Literacy (peer feedback provision) in partnership with CRADLE
Evaluation of field trips in first-year units across multiple disciplines
First-year students and the pedagogical value of the AI assisted workshops