Angela Rong Yang Zhang
Research Fellow
College of Health and Enablement
Dr Angela Rong Yang Zhang is a sociocultural and medical anthropologist whose research focuses on aged care, dementia care, palliative care, digital health, and lived-experience-led innovation. Based at the Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death and Dying (RePaDD) at Flinders University, she works at the intersection of ethnography, health services research and co-design to support equitable, person-centred care systems in Australia.
Angela’s research brings together long-term ethnographic fieldwork and applied health research to examine how care is organised and experienced in residential aged care, home-based care and palliative care settings. Her monograph, At Home in a Nursing Home: An Ethnography of Movement and Care in Australia (Berghahn Books, 2023), explores walking, mobility, feeding and everyday routines as sites where institutional logics, risk, autonomy and relationships are continually negotiated. She has published on topics including movement restrictions during COVID-19, co-design in aged care research, and feeding and agency in end-of-life dementia care.
Her applied research experience spans dementia care, carer support, food provision in nursing homes, and culturally responsive end-of-life care. She has held roles as Research Associate, Project Manager and Senior Research Coordinator on projects funded by the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations, Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia (ARIIA), Kidney Health Australia and the Australian Research Council, working closely with clinicians, service providers and consumer partners to translate research into practice.
Angela’s professional and community interests centre on building equitable, person-centred health and social care systems through strong consumer and community involvement. She is committed to embedding lived experience at every stage of research and service innovation. Most recently, she led the establishment of the Inclusive Innovation Advisory Group (IIAG), supported by a Caring Futures Institute Lived Experience Involvement Microgrant. The IIAG brings together consumer advocates, carers, CALD representatives, service providers and researchers to guide the responsible design and implementation of advanced assistive and digital technologies in home-based aged care and disability support.
Her emerging programme of work explores how digital health, real-time monitoring, predictive analytics and assistive technologies can be mobilised in ways that enhance, rather than replace, human care. Across all her initiatives, Angela is particularly focused on building long-term partnerships that enable co-designed research, shared decision-making and practical, context-sensitive solutions to complex care challenges in Australia’s aged and palliative care systems.
Master of Public Health (in progress), College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University, Australia – ongoing
PhD in Social Anthropology (Medical Anthropology), The University of Adelaide, Australia – 2020
Thesis: At Home in a Nursing Home: on Movement and Care
Master’s by Research in Medical Psychology and Psychological Counselling and Psychotherapy, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China – 2009
Thesis: Stressors and Suicidality of Middle-aged and Older Crisis Line Callers
Bachelor of Psychology (Honours), Peking University, Beijing, China – 2007
Thesis: Case Analysis of Five Homosexual Men: Adult Attachment Experience
Certificate IV in Aged Care, Bestwest Care, Australia – 2011
Certificate III in Aged Care Work, Bestwest Care, Australia – 2009
Wicked Problems Scholars Scheme – 2026
Flinders Leadership Mastery Experience (FLAME) Program 2026 Bronze-level – 2026
Flinders DVCR AI for Research scheme – 2025
Caring Futures Institute Lived Experience Involvement Microgrants – 2025
Health Translation SA Research Translation Essentials Program – 2024
Emerging Researchers in Ageing (ERA)Conference Bursary – 2015
Australian Postgraduate Award, Australian Government – 2015
In her roles as Research Fellow at the Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death and Dying (RePaDD), and Technical Professional (REDCap) on the MRFF-funded SPOCTrial project in the College of Medicine and Public Health, Dr Zhang’s key responsibilities include:
Leading and collaborating on qualitative and ethnographic research in aged care, dementia care, palliative and end-of-life care, and digital health, building on her long-term fieldwork in Australian nursing homes and her monograph At Home in a Nursing Home: An Ethnography on Movement and Care in Australia.
Designing, implementing and managing complex research projects, drawing on her experience as Research Associate, Project Manager and Senior Research Coordinator on NFACR- and ARIIA-funded iSupport for Dementia projects, a nursing home food project, and an ARC project on end-of-life care in culturally and linguistically diverse communities. This includes protocol development, ethics and governance submissions, coordination of multi-site and interdisciplinary teams, and preparation of reports and peer-reviewed publications.
Providing specialist methodological and conceptual expertise in sociocultural and medical anthropology, ethnography, co-design and qualitative methods to interdisciplinary teams in medicine, nursing, allied health and social sciences, with particular emphasis on bodily realities, mobility, feeding, risk, and institutional care.
Delivering technical and data-management support for clinical and health-services research, especially through REDCap database design, data quality monitoring and process optimisation for the SPOCTrial point-of-care testing study in remote primary health settings.
Building and maintaining partnerships with clinicians, aged care and palliative care providers, consumer and carer organisations, and culturally and linguistically diverse communities, informed by her prior working experience as an aged care worker, group facilitator and grief counsellor, and crisis-line operator, as well as her voluntary roles in dementia advocacy.
Developing competitive research funding applications by contributing a transdisciplinary understanding of people's experiences of health and wellbeing.
Dr Angela Rong Yang Zhang’s professional and community interests focus on advancing equitable, person-centred health and social care systems in Australia through sustained consumer and community involvement. Her work spans aged care, dementia care, palliative care and digital health, with a particular emphasis on culturally safe, co-designed innovation that reflects the lived realities of older adults, carers and diverse communities.
She currently leads the Inclusive Innovation Advisory Group (IIAG), established with support from a Caring Futures Institute Lived Experience Involvement Microgrant. The IIAG brings together consumer advocates, carers, culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) representatives, service providers and researchers to guide the responsible development of AI-enabled and data-driven technologies in home-based aged care and disability support. Through this initiative, Dr Zhang is embedding lived-experience leadership into the governance, design and evaluation of emerging technologies.
Across these initiatives, Dr Zhang is committed to building long-term, trust-based partnerships that enable shared decision-making, co-designed research and practical, context-sensitive solutions to complex care challenges. Her work exemplifies inclusive innovation in action to bridge anthropology, digital health and community engagement to shape more responsive and humane care systems in Australia.
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South Australia 5042
South Australia | Northern Territory
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