Associate Professor Leah Brennan is a clinical, health, educational and developmental psychologist and a board approved supervisor. Her areas of clinical research focus include eating, weight and body image (e.g., eating disorders, overweight/obesity, body image, weight stigma), and the promoting the availability of best-practice psychology treatment (e.g., telehealth psychology, guided self-help). She works as both an academic (teaching and research) and a clinician.

Leah has a particular interest in the application of psychological approaches to understand, prevent and treat eating, weight and body image concerns and their biopsychosocial comorbidities (e.g., polycystic ovary syndrome, depression, stigma) in children, adolescents and adults. She leads the Body Image, Eating and Weight Clinical Research Team (BEWT). She has a range of ongoing and upcoming projects examining eating disorders, overweight/obesity, body image and weight stigma and their treatment.

Leah is a member of the National Eating Disorders Collaboration Steering Committee and is the inaugural convenor of the Australian Psychological Society's Eating, Weight and Body Image Interest Group. Leah is passionate about the provision of best-practice psychological treatment in the community, and the development, evaluation and dissemination of evidence-based interventions suitable for ‘real-world’ application. She also has a particular interest in the provision of best-practice psychological support in rural areas (e.g, optimising the use of telehealth psychology to facilitate access to treatment).

Much of Leah’s academic teaching has focused on training psychologists to be scientist-practitioners by promoting the integration of evidence based practice and practice based research across postgraduate coursework, placement and theses. Leah particularly enjoys post-graduate research supervision and clinical training and supervision. She is an experienced public speaker. She regularly presents at scientific conferences and facilitates professional training programs. Leah is also regularly sought out by the media to share her expertise in eating disorders, overweight/obesity, body image, weight stigma and telehealth psychology.

Leah joined La Trobe School of Psychology and Public Health in October 2019. Prior to that Leah worked in a range of clinical (hospital, community and private), academic (ACU, Monash, RMIT University) and policy (Victorian Government) roles. Most recently she was an Associate Professor at Australian Catholic University where she has focused predominately on postgraduate teaching and leadership. There she led the Body Image, Eating, and Weight Clinical Research Team (BEWT) and established and led the Clinic for Health Eating and Weight (CHEW) aimed at integrating science and practice in postgraduate psychology training.