ACU bioethicist first Australian to be awarded prestigious Fellowship

A lecturer and bioethicist in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University’s Melbourne Campus (St Patrick’s) has become the first registered nurse and first Australian to be awarded the prestigious Edmund Pellegrino Fellowship at Georgetown University in Washington D.C.

Joanne Grainger will spend June 2010 at Georgetown University’s Clinical Centre for Bioethics under the leadership of Emeritus Professor Edmund Pellegrino and Director Dr Carol Taylor.

The Fellowship provides the opportunity for PhD students to be mentored by Professor Pellegrino on their studies, as well as contribute to their current projects in the area of clinical bioethics.

The focus of Joanne’s PhD research is feminist ethics and the care of people with advanced dementia in residential or aged care facilities.

“I feel very honoured to have been chosen as the recipient of this Fellowship,” she said. “From an academic and bioethicist perspective, this is an invaluable opportunity and one that is of great significance in reputation and prestige within the international bioethics arena.”