Keynote Speakers

Myra Bluebond-Langner is Professor of Palliative Care for Children and Young People (Emeritus) at University College London, Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. Appointed to UCL as Professor and True Colours Chair of Palliative Care for Children and Young People she served as the academic lead for the Louis Dundas Centre for Children’s Palliative Care - an academic and clinical partnership involving the Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.

She is also Board of Governors’ Professor of Anthropology (Emerita) and founder and former director of the Rutgers University Center for Children and Childhood Studies. While at Rutgers University she founded the RU Center for Children and Childhood Studies and was the founding editor of the Rutgers University Press Book Series in Childhood Studies (2000-2016).

She currently serves on the International Advisory Board for the Paediatric Palliative Care Centre for Research Excellence at QUT Health, Queensland Australia and is a member of the Paediatric Palliative Care Innovation and Discovery Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital-Harvard University.

Trained as an anthropologist her work has been driven by a desire to improve the lives of seriously ill children, young people and their families and to contribute to our understanding of children and childhoods more broadly. This commitment has led to a program of research and writing on the experiences of seriously ill children and their families over the course of the illness trajectory on topics ranging from ill children and their siblings understanding of illness and death to ways in which they and families endeavor to control the intrusion illness makes into their lives as they deal with physical, social, emotional aspects of living with a life limiting condition and life threatening illness.

To this end her research portfolio includes studies of: prognostic disclosure and decision making for children with high risk brain tumors, parents approaches to advance care planning, identification and management of breakthrough pain, clinicians attitudes and understanding of palliative care and implications for referral as well as research leading onto development of outcome measures in paediatric palliative care, identification and reduction of medication error in care in the community and improvement in conduct of consultations involving children with life limiting conditions and life threatening illnesses and their parents.

Best known for her books The Private Worlds of Dying Children and In the Shadow of Illness: Parents and Siblings of the Chronically Ill Child (Princeton University Press), she has published articles in journals in anthropology, psychology, childhood studies, oncology and palliative care. Her work has informed clinical guidance as well as policy in areas of communication with seriously ill children, research ethics, and end of life care.

She is the recipient of numerous grants including National Science Foundation (US), National Endowment for the Humanities (US), Department of Health England and The Health Foundation (UK) as well as several awards most notably Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association and society for Applied Anthropology and Honorary Fellow in The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

Kate Reed is a Palliative Care Nurse Practitioner with over 14 years’ experience in the ACT community across the outpatient, home based, residential aged care and acute care settings. She is currently in a Director role at ACT Health with the Voluntary Assisted Dying Implementation Taskforce and is completing her Masters of Law (International Law) at ANU while volunteering time to develop a palliative care service in Honiara, Solomon Islands.

Kate’s key interest and experience is the provision of equitable models of care to increase access to essential palliative care services, medication and expert clinician’s focusing on palliative care as part of universal health care delivery in Australia and the Oceanic region.

For the past 29 years Christopher Hall has held the position of Director and Chief Executive Officer of Grief Australia. He is a psychologist specialising in grief and bereavement. Christopher was elected President of the Association for Death Education and Counselling in 2015. In 2007, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Work Group on Dying, Death and Bereavement and served as chair from 2010-2013 and as the Secretary/Treasurer since 2010. The Association for Death Education and Counselling in 2018 awarded him the ADEC Service Award for his commitment to the field and advancing the study of dying, death and bereavement.

Christopher is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a Fellow of the International Work Group on Death, Dying and Bereavement, an Honorary Fellow of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne and an Industry Fellow of the Faculty of Education at Monash University. He serves as the Editor of the journal Grief Matters: The Australian Journal of Grief and Bereavement and is a former Associate Editor of Death Studies. Since 2010, Christopher has been a member of the Coronial Council of Victoria. In the 2024 King’s Birthday Honours Christopher was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, (AM) for significant service to psychology, particularly to grief and bereavement.