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.

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.

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.

Wendy Lipworth is Professor of Bioethics in the Department of Philosophy at Macquarie University. Her work sits at the intersection of bioethics and professional ethics, with a particular focus on the ethics of biomedical research, innovation and translation. She supervises Masters and PhD students and teaches applied ethics to philosophy and biotechnology students. She is a member of the Ethics Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the Steering Committees of the Australian Ethical Health Alliance and Brain Cancer Australia.

Paul Komesaroff is a physician, researcher and philosopher at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, where he is Professor of Medicine and Executive Director of Global Reconciliation, an international collaboration that promotes communication and dialogue across cultural, racial, religious, political and other kinds of difference. He is involved in a wide range of teaching, research and action projects in reconciliation and ethics. These span a broad field, including the impact of new technologies on health and society, consent in research, the experience of illness, palliative care and end of life issues, complementary medicines, obesity, and cross-cultural teaching and learning.

Hudson is the Chair of the Human Research Ethics Committee, Townsville University Hospital and Health Service, and a Senior Lecturer at The University of Sydney Medical School.