Professor Tina Cockburn TEP, Director, Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology

Professor Tina Cockburn TEP, is a Professor of Law in the School of Law, Faculty of Business and Law at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Director of the Australian Centre for Health Law Research (ACHLR), co-lead of the ACHLR Planning for Healthy Ageing program, sessional member of the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) and member of the Queensland Law Society Health and Disability Law Committee. Prior to joining QUT she was employed as a solicitor with Feez Ruthning (now Allens).

Tina’s research focuses on access to justice by vulnerable members of society in three broad contexts: patient safety law; elder and disability law; and the institutional abuse of children. In the area of patient safety law, Tina’s research focuses on medico-legal issues; medical litigation; compensation and redress arising out of adverse medical outcomes; and the communication of information to patients, including patient consent and post treatment open disclosure. In the area of elder and disability law, Tina’s research focuses on estate planning; succession law including wills and estates; equity and trusts; capacity and decision making; elder abuse; and adult safeguarding. In the area of the institutional abuse of children, her research focuses on compensation and redress for child sexual abuse.

Rebekah McWhirter is Associate Professor in Health Law and Ethics in the School of Medicine at Deakin University, and is affiliated with the National Centre for Indigenous Genomics at the Australian National University and the Centre of Law and Genetics at the University of Tasmania. Her research uses empirical and theoretical methods to address legal and ethical aspects of health, and aims to identify how law can support health. Bek’s work focuses on the regulations of genomics research, particularly in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, and research ethics. Her work is supported by funding from the NHMRC, MRFF and ARC. She teaches health law and ethics to medical students, sits on the board of Women’s Health Tasmania, is co-chair of the Education, Ethics and Social Issues committee for the Human Genetics Society of Australasia, and has eight years’ experience on human research ethics committees, including two as deputy chair.

Taryn Knox (PhD) is a lecturer at the Bioethics Centre, University of Otago. Her PhD (2019) was concerned whether homosexuality could ever correctly be categorised as a mental disorder, but since then her research interests have broadened to include sporting categorisation of trans people, weight bias and stigma and parental consent. She teaches ethics to medical and allied health students and is a member of the Otago University Human Ethics Committee.

Dr Marco Rizzi is Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia Law School. His research interests span health law & policy (with a particular focus on therapeutic goods regulation), risk regulation, tort law (with a particular focus on medical negligence), and law & technology. Marco is well versed in doctrinal, interdisciplinary and multi-method research. He is currently CI in two major MRFF projects: LINEAGE (focused on genomic data governance), and MandEval (focused on mandatory vaccination). He is the former lawyer of the UWA HREC.

Sam Roach is an interdisciplinary researcher and lecturer in the School of Law at QUT. He is a committee member of the Australasian Association of Bioethics and Health Law and a Chief Investigator in the Australia Centre of Health Law and Research. Sam’s doctoral thesis examines the role of law in preventing vaccine hesitancy. He adopts a social ecological approach to regulation, drawing on principles taken from public health, philosophy and psychology.

Sam is particularly interested in developing interventions that combat vaccine hesitancy through empowerment, rather than manipulation and coercion. His current research examines how disinformation and misinformation create disadvantage by reducing an individual’s capabilities.

Prior to becoming a lecturer, Sam worked as a lawyer at Minter Ellison and Law Right.

Tamra Lysaght is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests lie broadly in the ethical, regulatory and policy issues around the emerging sciences in healthcare and research. She teaches methods in empirical bioethics and has expertise in applying qualitative and quantitative approaches to address normative and policy-relevant questions of ethics. She is currently working on the ethics and regulation of translational stem cell research, regenerative medicine, genomics, precision medicine, gene editing technologies, and AI in healthcare.

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Nathan Emmerich is a Senior Lecturer in Bioethics at the ANU Medical School where he is the lead for Professionalism and Leadership in Phase One of the MChD. His primary pedagogic contribution to the MChD concerns medical ethics, he convenes an upper level and interdisciplinary undergraduate course ‘Bioethics and Beyond’ and contributes to bioethics education in the College of Science. His current research interests related to conscientious objection, the regulation of abortion, and conceptions of (bio)ethical expertise.

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