Queensland Bioethics Centre

Dr David G. Kirchhoffer

Director

Dr David G. Kirchhoffer is the Director of the Queensland Bioethics Centre, a collaboration between the Archdiocese of Brisbane and the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at ACU. He is also a member of ACU's Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry.
Dr David Kirchhoffer was born and raised in South Africa. He studied biology, psychology and theology in South Africa before going to Leuven in Belgium to read for a doctorate in theological ethics. Upon completion of his doctorate, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Law at KULeuven.

He then took on a continuing position in theological ethics at ACU before becoming director of QBC in October 2017. In 2015, he was a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore and is a senior research associate of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Johannesburg.

Since 2016, he has been appointed by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity as a Roman Catholic Commissioner on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, where he forms part of the sub-commission working on moral discernment in the churches.

His research focusses primarily on the relevance of human dignity in contemporary ethics, and its application to bioethical issues. More recently this has developed in the direction of the limitations of respect for autonomy in human research ethics. Significant publications include Human Dignity in Contemporary Ethics (Amherst NY: Teneo, 2013), and a collection co-edited with Bernadette Richards, Beyond Autonomy: limits and alternatives to informed consent in research ethics and law, Cambridge Bioethics and Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Mrs Ann Heath

Administrative Officer

Mrs Ann Heath studied Primary Education at Catholic College of Education. She taught for over 20 years throughout NSW. In 2009 Mrs Heath relocated to Queensland with her family. She commenced employment with Queensland Bioethics Centre, Ashgrove in 2015 and relocated with the Centre to the ACU Banyo Campus in 2017.

Jeyver Rodríguez

Doctoral Student

Jeyver Rodríguez studied Philosophy in the Universidad Industrial de Santander, Colombia (2008). Magister in Pedagogía, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Colombia (2015). Ph.D. Student in “Contemporary Humanism” in agreement between LUMSA University, Institute Catholic of Paris, Australian Catholic University and Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. In 2018-19 was Visiting Academic in Queensland Bioethics Centre.

Doctoral Research: Interdependence and Vulnerability. A connection between the Alasdair MacIntyre's Virtue Ethics and the Ecophilosophical tradition of Arne Næss. This project is directed by Dr. Luca Valera, Professor in Faculty of Philosophy and Director Bioethics Centre of Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and Co-directed by Dr. David Kirchhoffer, Director of the Queensland Bioethics Centre in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at ACU.

Dr Chi Wai Lui

Research Associate

Dr Chi Wai Lui is a research associate at the Queensland Bioethics Centre where he coordinates a project on the Ethics of Palliative Care and Voluntary Assisted Dying in Australia. Chi Wai’s background is in sociology and philosophy and he has extensive experience in teaching public health and qualitative research methods at the postgraduate level. His research over the past decade focuses on social determinants of health, use of supplements and complementary and alternative medicine, healthy ageing, and lived experience of living with chronic illness.