Dr Meaghan O’Donnell is the Head of Research at Phoenix Australia, and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne. She is the Director of Research at the Phoenix Australia Traumatic Stress Clinic.

She has published over 150 peer reviewed articles in the area of posttraumatic mental health. Many of these publications have been in influential journals including JAMA Psychiatry, British Journal of Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry and Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. She is a past president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (the premier society in the field of traumatic stress studies). She is on the editorial board for the European Journal of Traumatic Stress Studies and frequently is invited to present her research both nationally and internationally. She is a recipient of the Humboldt Experienced Researcher Fellowship to foster research collaborations in Germany. She works frequently with the Australian Commonwealth government departments including the Australian Department of Veterans' Affairs and the Australian Department of Defence both in a scientific advisory capacity and as investigator on research and evaluation projects. Her major areas of research include early interventions after trauma exposure, phenomenology of traumatic stress responses, and barriers to recovery. She has conducted many randomised controlled trials testing models of psychological intervention after trauma, and has expertise in running longitudinal studies of trauma survivors.