[1] Her research focuses on the areas of missing persons, ambiguous loss, grief and suicide bereavement.
[2][3][4] She is Professor in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Sciences at the CQ University, Sydney (Australia) and a Senior Research Fellow for Manna Institute.
[5] Wayland worked as a social worker from 1998-2010 in the fields of child protection and victims of crime.
[3] In 2005, she received a Churchill Fellowship to study "the international approach to counselling for families of missing persons focusing on the concept of unresolved loss".
[6] She obtained her PhD from the University of New England in 2015, studying hope and ambiguous loss, and was awarded the Chancellors Medal for Doctoral Research.