Membership of the Human Research Ethics Committee

Terms of reference

The functions of the Committee are:

• To consider the ethical implications of research proposals submitted to it for review.
• To evaluate the ethical conduct of relevant research involving humans according to National Health and Medical Research Council's National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2025) (NS) and The Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (2018) (Australian Code). “Relevant research” is research involving humans which meets the criteria for referral to the Committee.
• To comply with all guidelines and legislation relevant to research proposals considered.
• To provide advice on matters of an ethical nature, as required by the Secretary of the Department of Health (the Secretary).
• To provide a report annually to the Secretary.

The Committee will:

• Be appointed for a period of three years, with members able to apply for reappointment.
• Have power to co-opt experts suitable to its needs.
• Notify the Department of Health whenever a vacancy occurs in its membership so that a replacement may be appointed.
• Be provided with Secretariat support.
• Be remunerated in accordance with the rates for Group C Organisations as set out in the Department of Premier and Cabinet Guidelines on Appointment and Remuneration (1 July 2024).
• Be an insured entity under the Department of Health Corporate Insurance Program. Committee members will be protected by comprehensive insurance cover, which includes public liability and professional indemnity insurance.
• Members are appointed for three years. Vacancies in all membership categories arise from time to time.

Constitution of Human Research Ethics Committee

Dr Philomena Horsley - Chair

Dr Philomena Horsley has been a Chair of HRECs for over 20 years in the fields of health, disability and the justice system. She also served on the NHMRC's National Statement Section 4 Review Working Committee from 2018-2020.

Since 2005, Philomena has been engaged in teaching ethical thinking to HREC members and researchers. She was a content creator and workshop facilitator for PRAXIS Australia, including its accreditation course, HREC Essentials and its HREC Evaluation Guide and Toolkit. She regularly presents at conferences and courses on research ethics. She is particularly focussed on the inclusion of diverse and marginalised populations, and the importance of engaging relevant communities in the design of research.

Philomena is a Medical Anthropologist with additional qualifications in education, gender studies and professional writing and editing. She is an independent consultant to government, academic, health and community organisations, and holds a position as Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne where she also lectures. Her expertise includes gender and health, family and sexual violence, disability services, LGBTQ health and wellbeing, genetics and cancer, medical autopsies, and death and dying. She was an expert witness to the Commonwealth Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the Victorian Royal Commission on Family Violence.

She has served on a range of NFP Boards for many years and is currently the Chair of Abound Communities (retirement villages, residential aged care) and an Independent Member of Scope Australia's Customer Experience & Outcomes Board Committee. In her private life, Philomena is an award-winning fiction writer and past Judge on the national literary awards, the Davitts.

In 2001, Philomena was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll for Women and awarded a Centenary Medal for her work in women's health, disability and HIV/AIDS.

Professor Victoria White - Researcher

Victoria White (PhD) is Professor Psycho-oncology in the School of Psychology at Deakin University and Principal Research Fellow in the Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer (CBRC) at Cancer Council Victoria. Taking up the role at Deakin University in 2017, Victoria has spent most of her research career with the Cancer Council Victoria where she gained substantial experience in cancer control and oncology research.

Over her research career, Prof White has had two main research areas: understanding the prevalence of tobacco and alcohol use in adolescents and identifying ways to improve the care of people with cancer. Professor White has a long involvement with the national study of tobacco; alcohol and illicit substance use in Australian secondary students (ASSAD) and was the principal investigator for this project between 2002 and 2018. This work involved collaboration with state and territory partners to undertake surveys of over 20,000 secondary school students across Australia every three years.

Professor White has produced major reports for the Australian Government's Department of Health and Ageing and the Victorian Department of Health relating to the findings from this study. Her work in the area of cancer patients has involved the development of surveys to assess patients experience of care, surveys assessing the management of different adult and adolescents/young adult cancers and testing interventions to determine their ability to reduce distress in people affected by cancer including those diagnosed with a BRCA1/2 mutation.

Professor White's research has been funded by a range of Australia's key research funding bodies including NHMRC, Cancer Australia, National Breast Cancer Foundation and the Victorian Cancer Agency. She has published over 170 peer-refereed papers with high impact (h-Index: Google Scholar 50) and has authored over 200 reports to governments at the state and federal level and state-based cancer societies and consumer advocacy organisations. She has published in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Psych oncology, Supportive Care in Cancer, Addiction and Tobacco Control.

She currently serves on Cancer Council Victoria's Medical and Scientific Standing Research Sub-Committee (2004-ongoing) and is on the access committee for Register4 (a register of people interested in taking part in research projects) and has participated in National Breast Cancer Foundation and Cancer Australia grant review panels. She was a member of Cancer Australia's Data Advisory Committee (2012-2017). She received the Nigel Gray Award for Achievement in Tobacco Control in the Oceania Region in 2013.

Dr Rachel Earl - Care and Counselling member

Dr Rachel Earl is a public health practitioner who lives and works on the lands of the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri People in the Southeast of Melbourne. Rachel holds a combined Master of Psychology (Clinical)/PhD from the University of Adelaide and a Master of Public Health (Health Management) from Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health.

Rachel is passionate about the intersection of psychology and public health and has built experience across spheres of government in Australia, University teaching and research, the United Nations, and International Non-Government Organisations. Rachel's current role is as Manager of Youth Mental Health and Suicide Prevention at South Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network (SEMPHN). At SEMPHN, Rachel, and her team, work with those with lived experience of suicide and other partners to implement place-based approaches to suicide prevention.

In addition, the Youth Mental Health and Suicide Prevention team contribute to the commissioning and contract management of a range of clinical and non-clinical services that support the mental health and wellbeing needs of the local community.

Mary Rydberg - Community member

Mary Rydberg is a senior leader with experience in diverse administration and management roles within the health and community services sectors in Victoria. The roles have been within the State government, hospital, not-for-profit sector, and local government. I have extensive experience in strategic management, restructuring and business improvement with firsthand experience with culturally diverse and rural and remote organisations.

I am an experienced non-executive board member with a strong commitment to good governance. I have a particular interest and experience in advocating for the local communities and community members through my board roles and past contributions as a lay member to the PeterMac Human Research Ethics Committee.

Nina Ellis - Community member

Nina Ellis is a senior research management professional with extensive experience and expertise in the design, commissioning and strategic management of research and evaluation. Nina is passionate about well-designed and executed research, and the important intersect between research, insight, strategy and policy. She is particularly interested in health and vocational outcomes, customer experience and insight, behaviour change, and the strategies and policies that help people and organisations achieve outcomes and enhance quality of life.

Nina’s technical research expertise covers academic and commercial sectors, qualitative and quantitative methodologies, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, monitoring and evaluation. She also has extensive experience in KPI development and tracking, program logic mapping, project management, research with general and vulnerable populations, data management, analysis and reporting, translation and strategy development.

Nina is currently taking a career break and studying a Master of Evaluation at Melbourne University. Nina’s most recent former role was Senior Manager, Health, Disability and Compensation Research with the Transport Accident Commission (TAC), Victoria, Australia where she led a small team of research professionals focused on strategic research investment and governance, and the translation of evidence to inform strategy and operational performance.

Jo van Twest Farmer – Community member

Jo is an evaluator who lives and works on the lands of the Wurundjeri people. Jo currently works as an independent evaluation and research consultant, and her work prioritises people and communities who have been marginalised and have experienced trauma. She works across health and human services with a particular interest in mental health, family and sexual violence, justice and the legal system, as well as issues affecting children and young people, and LGBTQIA+ people. Jo has previously worked in other evaluation consulting roles, and in internal evaluation roles with not-for-profits and a community legal centre. She specialises in qualitative research methods and working sensitively with people and communities who experience trauma. In addition to her direct evaluation practice, she provides training and coaching for other evaluators and researchers seeking to undertake trauma-informed and ethical practice.

As a person with lived experience of mental ill-health, suicidality and intimate partner violence, she is passionate about how people with lived experience lead and contribute to research. She has contributed her advocacy and experience to a range of projects, including as a lived experience advisor the Clinical Guideline for management of eating disorders for people with higher weight and Deputy Co-Chair of the Measurement Technical Advisory Group for the National Stigma Reduction Strategy.

Jo has a particular interest in procedural research ethics and is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Melbourne exploring how young people with experiences of trauma understand and account for the key principles which underpin procedural ethics processes in Australia. She is currently a member of the Australian Evaluation Society's (AES) Pathways Committee and sits on the working group to update the AES' Guidelines for the Ethical Conduct of Evaluations. She also sits as Deputy Chair of Iris Ethics, an independent HREC focused on evaluation and social research. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Evaluation from the University of Melbourne and a BA from the University of Oxford.

Phil Grano – Pastoral member

Phil Grano OAM worked as a lawyer before joining the Society of Jesus in 1984 to train as a Catholic priest. As a Jesuit student, Phil lived at Corpus Christi Community in Greenvale, a community of men with alcohol addiction and a history of homelessness, for almost three years. He remained involved with this community in various capacities for another 18 years. In 1993 he was ordained a priest. He returned to the law mainly representing people who would otherwise struggle to get legal representation, many of whom were people with disability. He ceased being a Catholic priest in 1997, but he continued working for people with disability through the Villamanta Disability Rights Legal Service and then the Office of the Public Advocate. He retired in 2022. Phil has a degree in Theology from the Melbourne College of Divinity as well as a BA and LLB from Monash University.

Dr Heather McCormack – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Member

Dr Heather McCormack is a Scientia Research Fellow at the Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney, and a proud Wiradjuri woman living and working on Bidjigal land. She has worked in research, program management, health promotion and communications roles in the sexual health and blood-borne virus sector for over 15 years. Prior to transitioning to academia, she led Aboriginal sexual health programs for the NSW Ministry of Health for five years. She holds a PhD (Medicine), a Master of Public Health (Social Research), a Graduate Certificate Consumer and Community Engagement, a Bachelor of Media Communication and a Diploma of Community Engagement and is also in the first cohort of Australian health promotion practitioners to receive accreditation from the International Union of Health Promotion and Education.

Heather’s industry career grounds her research in an understanding of practical applications in real-world scenarios. Her research focusses on social aspects of sexual and reproductive health, communication in healthcare settings, and accessibility and acceptability of health services and interventions to diverse populations. She has particular interests in health equity, human rights, and strengths-based approaches, especially for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, culturally and linguistically diverse, and LGBTQ+ populations.

Dr Emma Felman - Lawyer

Emma is a Senior Legal Officer at the Australian Law Reform Commission (working on the current Human Tissue Inquiry), and a Lecturer at Melbourne Law School where she teaches Disputes and Ethics. Her PhD and research interests focus on the legal, ethical and philosophical impact of digital technologies and AI in biomedicine.

She is currently a Lawyer Member of the Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board (Victoria), the Victorian Perioperative Consultative Council, the Australian Medical Council Cosmetic Surgery Accreditation Advisory Committee, the Consumer Affairs Victoria Motor Car Traders Claims Committee, and Human Research Ethics Committees at The University of Melbourne and Bendigo Health. Previously, she worked as a litigation lawyer managing health law matters in the County and Supreme Courts of Victoria.

Morgyn Bostock – Community member

Morgyn currently works as an Integration Aide in a primary school, though previously spent almost a decade in the public service, most of which was spent working in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy. She is passionate about social policy and the importance of research projects in supporting effective initiatives to improve peoples' lives. Morgyn joined the Committee due to a deep commitment to transparent and ethical decision-making by government, having had both professional and personal experience with coronial inquests where the direst consequences of institutional lapses in these areas can be seen.

Professor Linda Ross – Care and Counselling Member

Linda Ross is a registered Paramedic and Associate Professor at Monash University. Linda’s clinical career with Ambulance Victoria spanned 19 years. She practiced as an Advanced Life Support Paramedic and held various leadership and education roles.

Linda has since forged a career as a nationally and internationally recognised paramedic educator. She has held numerous leadership and executive committee positions, including Head of Department and Head of Postgraduate Programs. Her current role is as Director of Education where she utilises her skills and expertise to oversee education governance and quality across the department, and mentor junior staff in quality education practices. She is also editor of Paramedic Principles and Practice: A Clinical Reasoning Approach (2nd Ed).

Linda is an experienced researcher and HDR supervisor. Her research interests include paramedic education, older adults and clinical reasoning. She has previously been Chair of the Australasian College of Paramedicine Research Committee and Associate Editor of ‘Paramedicine,’ an international Q1 journal. She is passionate about evidence-based practice and patient centred care.

Professor Jennifer McGinley – Researcher

Professor Jennifer McGinley is a physiotherapist at the University of Melbourne and former Head of the Department of Physiotherapy. She has clinical experience in neurological rehabilitation and academic expertise in training graduate and post graduate research methodology.

Her research has focussed on the measurement and understanding of movement and function across the lifespan in healthy people and those with neurological conditions including stroke, Parkinson's disease and paediatric neuromuscular disorders. She has a particular interest in translation of biomechanical evidence to inform rehabilitation practice and in clinical trials of interventions to improve mobility and reduce falls. Her current focus of research and advocacy is on inclusive and equitable access to high quality health services for people living with Parkinson’s disease. She currently serves as a Board Director on two community support organisations and has previously served on Human Research and Ethics Committees.