Jemma King
Australian psychologist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jemma King is an Australian researcher who has worked on emotional-intelligence training and psycho-physiological stress in sport and military settings.[1] She a research fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland (UQ).[2]
Jemma King | |
|---|---|
Giving an address in 2024 | |
| Education | University of Queensland |
| Occupation | Researcher |
| Employer | University of Queensland |
Early life and education
King spent her childhood moving around Australia as the family followed her father's hotel-management postings, living in Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane, Townsville and Canberra; the itinerant lifestyle, she has said, sparked an early fascination with individual differences in behaviour.[3] After leaving school she worked briefly as a fashion model and performed stunt-double work on Police Academy 7 before turning full-time to psychology.[3] She earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a first-class Honours degree in Business Management at UQ, then completed a PhD in Human Behaviour at the UQ Business School. Her thesis, Emotional intelligence and its effects on biomarkers of workplace stress (2020), examined cortisol responses to cyber-ostracism and laid the foundation for her later applied programmes.[2]
Career
Since 2020 King has held an honorary research fellowship at UQ's School of Psychology, supervising postgraduate projects on stress, sleep and resilience.[2] She has published peer-reviewed work on military populations, including a 2023 Military Medicine study that linked sleep-wake consistency with psychological resilience among U.S. Army soldiers stationed in the Arctic.[4]
King developed a pre-deployment "Performance Optimisation Program" for military personnel, the programme has since been extended to high-performance sport organisations such as the Australian Olympic swim team.[5][3] In the private sector she is the director of BioPsychAnalytics, advises McKinsey & Company, and delivers leadership modules for the University of Sydney MBA program and for the Australian Defence College.[2][5]
In 2024, the ABC's Australian Story profiled her friendship with Olympic swimmer Shayna Jack, describing King as a "human behaviourist" who helped the athlete rebuild resilience after a high-profile doping case.[6]
Personal life
King lives in Brisbane and is the mother of three children.[7]