Stacy Tzoumakis

Dr. Stacy Tzoumakis serves as an ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow at the Griffith Criminology Institute and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health within UNSW Sydney's Faculty of Medicine & Health. Her multidisciplinary research employs a developmental life-course approach to examine critical intersections between child maltreatment, mental health, and offending behaviors across the lifespan.

Dr. Tzoumakis holds a BSc and MSc in Criminology from Université de Montréal, followed by a PhD in Criminology from Simon Fraser University. Her educational foundation spans multiple disciplines, enabling her unique perspective on developmental pathways to antisocial behavior.

Her research program investigates the developmental origins of aggression and antisocial behavior from the earliest periods, with particular focus on:

• Child maltreatment and its long-term consequences
• Gender-specific pathways in criminological development
• Family violence dynamics across generations
• Mental health outcomes among youth in the justice system
• Community-based child health approaches to prevention
• Developmental epidemiology of behavioral problems

As a recipient of the prestigious Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (ARC DECRA), Dr. Tzoumakis has established herself as a leading researcher in developmental criminology and child mental health.

Since 2014, she has served as a key investigator on the New South Wales Child Development Study (NSW-CDS), a landmark population-based multi-agency data linkage project involving 87,000 children and their parents. This innovative study integrates administrative records from criminal justice, health, welfare, and education systems to identify critical vulnerability and protective factors across multiple domains of child development and wellbeing.

Dr. Tzoumakis's work bridges academic research with practical applications, directly informing the development of effective preventative interventions for vulnerable children and young people through extensive collaboration with government agencies and community organizations.