About Us

About Us

The Monash Bioethics Centre is a world-leading hub of bioethics education, research and public engagement.

Facts and figures

  • Established in 1980

    by Professor Peter Singer as Australia's first research centre devoted to bioethics

  • International leaders

    in bioethics. Our researchers inform local and global policies in health and biotechnologies

  • One of the world's oldest

    Master of Bioethics program producing hundreds of graduates since 1981

The Centre explores the ethical tensions that arise in healthcare and biomedical science, with a particular focus on new and emerging technologies. The Centre’s core vision is to build a more ethical society, in which systems, technologies and policies are responsibly harnessed to promote health, wellbeing, and equity for all. Established in 1980 by Professor Peter Singer as Australia's first research centre devoted to bioethics (then named the Centre for Human Bioethics), it has developed into an international leader in the field.

We undertake groundbreaking research that influences policy and regulation, and which has an impact in our healthcare systems and biomedical research ecosystems. Our research informs international and national scholarly debate, policy development and implementation, and public understanding of the ethical dimensions of health, technology and society.

In education, at both undergraduate and graduate levels, we strive to build the next generation of thought leaders in ethics through up-to-date research-informed curricula, delivered in ways that integrate innovative teaching modes and technologies.

In ethics leadership, we strive for community engagement to shape public debate on contemporary challenges, and we provide upskilling opportunities for current and future professionals in relevant areas to increase ethics literacy across society.

Dr John Gardner

Dr John Gardner
Director of the Monash Bioethics Centre

"We live in an uncertain and rapidly changing world. Rapid technological development in healthcare and biomedicine, the proliferation of biotech markets, and the entrenchment of global health inequalities all present complex ethical, social and policy challenges. Bioethics has therefore never been more relevant than it is today. It gives us the tools to understand how best to respond to a diversity of health needs and to ensure a more equitable world for everyone. Studying bioethics with us will equip you with the expertise to explore and navigate complex ethical, social and policy challenges in healthcare, biomedicine and related fields. Our experts also help organisations to manage these challenges as they arise in specific institutional settings. As Australia’s leading centre for bioethics research and teaching, the Monash Bioethics Centre makes a difference."

Centre History

Established in 1980, the Centre quickly became known for its practical and secular approach to bioethics. The Centre’s founder, Peter Singer and colleague Helga Kuhse drew on empirical research to challenge aspects of existing medical practice and familiar assumptions in debates about reproduction. Projects on the ethics of IVF and embryo research, in the context of groundbreaking work by Monash IVF researchers, resulted in some of the first published work on these topics. Singer and Kuhse also developed influential critiques of a reliance on sanctity-of-human-life views by health professionals and lawmakers in justifying medical decisions at the beginning and end of life.

Since 1981 the Centre has also been producing the quarterly journal Monash Bioethics Review (originally titled Bioethics News), the first peer reviewed bioethics journal based in Australia, and one of the world’s oldest bioethics journals.

In 1989 the Centre developed one of the world’s first Master of Bioethics programs, which has produced hundreds of graduates, and many of the Centre’s doctoral and Masters graduates have become highly successful bioethicists in their own right.

Today, the Centre hosts a thriving community of student and academic researchers, who engage in scholarly, public and policy debates around core and cutting edge issues in biomedicine, technology and healthcare ethics.