Christine Bigby

Academic career

Bigby is Professor of Social Work at La Trobe University, where she serves as Director of the Living with Disability Research Centre.

She was founding editor of the journal Research and Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, a position she held until October 2025. She has held editorial positions for other leading journals including Australian Social Work, Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability, Disability and Society, and the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

Her leadership roles include chairing the IASSIDD Special Interest Group on Aging and the Comparative Policy and Practice Group, serving on the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts (2019- 2023), and serving on the executive committee of the Australasian Society for Intellectual Disability.

Research

Bigby’s research focuses on practice that enhances the engagement, inclusion, and quality of life of adults and older people who have intellectual and cognitive disabilities. She has led longitudinal studies examining supported decision making (since 2015) and the quality of support in group homes (since 2009) for people with intellectual disabilities.

Specific areas of her disability research include:

Social inclusion and community participation: identifying barriers and facilitators to meaningful engagement for people with intellectual disability, aiming to translate research into practice and policy.

Supported decision making: testing evidence-based frameworks to build supporters’ capability and to inform practice guidelines to support decision making.

Quality of support in group homes: Bigby’s longitudinal studies examine how staffing, organisational culture, and practice influence outcomes for people with intellectual disabilities who live in supported accommodation.

She has also been involved in major research reports, including those addressing supported decision-making frameworks commissioned by Australia’s Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.

Her research was cited in relation to the 2023 NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission recommendations for standards for accommodation services.

Her frameworks for supported decision-making have been discussed in independent academic summaries of the Disability Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.

Major news outlets have reported on her work linking supported decision-making research to wider disability rights discussions.