New bioethical frameworks

Velissa Aplin

Velissa Aplin is a Chief Investigator with the Interconnect Health Research Project, contributing to Work Packages 1 and 3 and the Project Management Committee.

She brings almost 30 years’ experience in the mental health and trauma informed care fields, during which time they have worked in leadership, training, policy, consulting, research and senior clinical roles.  Velissa is currently the Profession Lead for Social Work for Canberra Health Services and the Coordinator of the Variations in Sex Characteristics Psychosocial Service in the ACT.  Velissa has contributed to journal publications in the trauma informed care space. 

Velissa holds degrees of Bachelor of Arts (Psychology) and Bachelor of Social Work.

Kate Burry

Dr Kate Burry is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow with the Interconnect Health Research project, contributing to Work Packages 2 and 3. She is also an Associate with the Australian Human Rights Institute, UNSW.

Kate brings over a decade of experience in sexual, domestic and family violence, human rights, and sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. She has led research on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of sex workers in Luganville, Vanuatu; barriers to sexual and reproductive health services remote communities in Vanuatu; and reproductive abuse and coercion in New Zealand and Australia. Kate’s PhD explored reproductive (in)justice in the Pacific islands and included an empirical study on Cook Islands women’s experiences accessing abortion from their legally restricted context.

Kate has published in bioethics, health and social work journals, and in a book on sexual and reproductive justice.

Kate holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Development Studies from Victoria University of Wellington, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine from the University of New South Wales.   

Connect with Kate on LinkedIn and ORCID.

Morgan Carpenter

Associate Professor Morgan Carpenter is the Chief Investigator – A for the Interconnect Health Research Project, providing lived experience expertise across the Work Packages, and acting as Chair of Work Package 3.

Morgan is an Associate Professor at Sydney Health Ethics, in the University of Sydney School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health. He is an internationally recognised expert on human rights and ethics in relation to the treatment of people with innate variations of sex characteristics (also known as intersex variations or differences of sex development). His work focuses on medicine, health policy and social policy.

Morgan is also the Executive Director of InterAction for Health and Human Rights, a charity that promotes the health and human rights of people with innate variations of sex characteristics through advocacy and psychosocial support services. He is also an inaugural member of the Australian Capital Territory’s new Restricted Medical Treatment Assessment Board, and the New South Wales government’s LGBTIQ+ Advisory Council.

Morgan has been contracted to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Australian Capital Territory government and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. He is a reference or advisory group member for the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care, Australian Bureau of Statistics and New South Wales Health.

Connect with Morgan on LinkedIn, ORCID, and BlueSky.

Bridget Haire

Associate Professor Bridget Haire is a Chief Investigator with the Interconnect Health Research Project, contributing to WP 2 (the population survey work package) and as deputy chair of WP 3 (the bioethics work package).

Bridget is an empirical bioethicist with over a decade’s experience in conducting participatory research on sex, sexuality and gender issues in collaboration with community partners. She lectures in public health ethics at UNSW Sydney, and is an associate of the Australian Human Rights Institute. She has an extensive professional background in the HIV community sector an advocate, journalist and policy analyst, and was the President of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations from 2015-18.

Bridget has authored more than 115 peer reviewed publications and 10 book chapters. She regularly writes for The Conversation

Bridget holds a Master of Bioethics (hons) and PhD from the University of Sydney.

Connect with Bridget on LinkedIn, ORCID, or Research Gate.

Bonnie Hart

Bonnie Hart is a member of Interconnect Health Research’s Project Management Committee, contributes across the project’s Work Packages and governance committees, and is the Lived Experience Lead and Chair of Work Package 1.  

Bonnie is a Research Fellow (Intersex Psychosocial Models of Care) with the University of Southern Queensland, where she is also a PhD candidate. She has published 6 articles and 1 book, primarily on the lived experiences and healthcare and mental health needs of people with innate variations of sex characteristics.

Bonnie is the founding Service Manager of InterLink, the intersex psychosocial support service and is the Deputy Executive Director of InterAction for Health & Human Rights. She is a nationally recognised intersex content expert with 17 years working with the intersex community members as an intersex peer worker, systemic advocate, consultant and mental health worker. Bonnie was an organising signatory of the 2017 Darlington Statement of intersex community consensus and founder of the YellowTick intersex education and inclusion initiative.

Connect with Bonnie on LinkedIn and ORCID.

Aileen Kennedy

Dr Aileen Kennedy is a Chief Investigator with the Interconnect Health Research Project, contributing to Work Package 3 and the Project Management Committee.

Aileen is a leading national and international scholar on law relating to sex and gender, with a specific focus on research and advocacy on intersex human rights law. She joined the UTS Law Health Justice Research Centre in April 2023 as a Chancellor’s Research Fellow. The focus of Aileen’s current research is to provide an analysis of Australian law as it impacts on the intersex population and develop a comprehensive suite of law reform proposals to promote the human rights of people with innate variations of sex characteristics (IVSC).

Following a Bachelor of Arts/Law (Honours) at Macquarie University (1989) and a Master of Law at the University of Sydney (2006), Aileen completed her PhD at UTS (2021). Her thesis considered the impact of neurological theories of binary gender on judicial decision-making for transgender and intersex minors in Australia. Previously, she has worked in the legal profession and held academic roles at University of New England, University of Western Sydney, UNSW Sydney and Macquarie University.

Aileen is the author of Law, Gender Identity, and the Brain (2024) published by Routledge Press.

Connect with Aileen on LinkedIn and ORCID.

Alyssa Morse

Dr Alyssa Morse is a Chief Investigator with the Interconnect Health Research Project, contributing to Work Package 1.

Alyssa is an emerging leader in lived experience mental health research. Currently, she is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Mental Health Research, The Australian National University (https://researchportalplus.anu.edu.au/en/persons/alyssa-morse). Previously, Alyssa held a Suicide Prevention Australia Post-Doctoral Fellowship. She led the South Western Sydney Local Health District (SWSLHD) arm of a co-created evaluation of Safe Haven suicide prevention services, working in partnership with the SWSLHD Towards Zero Suicides Initiative team. Alyssa’s research focuses on three main areas: (1) improving lived experience involvement in health policy, services and research, (2) prevention and promotion in youth mental health, and (3) mental health service evaluation.

Alyssa is a co-author of “This is doin’ My Head in’: The Ethics of Psychological Research” a chapter in the recently published Routledge Handbook of Human Research Ethics and Integrity in Australia (Edited by Bruce M. Smyth, Michael A. Martin, and Mandy Downing, 2024, Routledge International Handbooks).

Alyssa holds a PhD from the John Curtin School of Medical Research, ANU.

Connect with Alyssa via ORCID.

Ainsley Newson

Professor Ainsley Newson (she/her) is a Chief Investigator with the Interconnect Health Research Project, contributing to Work Package 3 and the Project Management Committee.

Ainsley is Professor of Bioethics at Sydney Health Ethics, The University of Sydney. She is an internationally recognised expert in the ethical aspects of genomics and human reproduction.

An elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales (2023), Ainsley has received numerous awards including the Mito Foundation Award for Excellence in Research (2019). She is currently a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee for the NHMRC, the Gene Technology Ethics and Community Consultative Committee for the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator, and an elected Board member for the International Association of Bioethics (IAB). Ainsley also serves on multiple other advisory bodies including the NSW Health Ethics Advisory Panel.  

Ainsley’s work focuses on the appropriate implementation of genomic technologies in health. She has authored over 160 peer-reviewed publications and given more than 120 invited presentations internationally.

Ainsley holds a PhD in Bioethics, Bachelor of Laws (Hons), and Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Human Genetics from the University of Melbourne. Ainsley is endosex.

Connect with Ainsley on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Ingrid Rowlands

Dr Ingrid Rowlands contributes to the Interconnect Health project as a Lived Experience Lead, Chief Investigator, and Chair of Work Package 2.

She is currently a Senior Research Officer at QIMR Berghofer, and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Queensland’s School of Public Health.

Ingrid has over 15 years’ experience in the management and analysis of complex data from large-scale cohort and case-control studies. Her research primarily focuses on women’s reproductive health across the life course, with expertise in the psychosocial aspects of adverse health conditions including miscarriage, infertility, endometriosis, and gynaecological cancer.

Ingrid has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Queensland, with her doctoral work examined women’s adjustment to miscarriage using data from more than 14,000 young women participating in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health.

Connect with Ingrid on ORCID.