The RANZCP2009 Organising Committee are very pleased to confirm an outstanding line-up of keynote speakers.
Professor Fran Baum
Julian Burnside QC
Professor Ivan Diamond A.B., B.S., M.D., Ph.D.
Dr Glen O. Gabbard, M.D
Associate Professor Mohan Issac
Professor Nick Martin
Professor Mark Williams
Professor Fran Baum
Flinders Medical Centre
Fran Baum is Professor of Public Health and an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. She is also Foundation Director of the South Australian Community Health Research Unit and the Co-Chair of the Global Steering Council of the People’s Health Movement - a global network of health activist (www. phmovement.org) .She served as a Commissioner on the Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Science and of the Australian Health Promotion Association. She is also a past National President and Life Member of the Public Health Association of Australia.
She has researched and published extensively on the social and economic determinants of health, comprehensive primary health care and health promotion, particularly Healthy Cities. Her text book The New Public Health (3rd edition published in Jan 2008 by Oxford University Press) is widely used as a core public health text.
Julian Burnside QC
The Victorian Bar
Julian Burnside is a barrister based in Melbourne. He joined the Bar in 1976 and took silk in 1989.
He acted for the Ok Tedi natives against BHP, for Alan Bond in fraud trials, for Rose Porteous in numerous actions against Gina Rinehart, and for the Maritime Union of Australia in the 1998 waterfront dispute against Patrick Stevedores. He was the Senior Counsel assisting the Australian Broadcasting Authority in the “Cash for Comment” inquiry and was senior counsel for Liberty Victoria in the Tampa litigation.
He is President of Liberty Victoria, and has acted pro bono in many human rights cases, in particular concerning the treatment of refugees.
He is passionately involved in the arts. He collects contemporary paintings and sculptures and regularly commissions music. He is Chair of Fortyfive Downstairs and Chair of the Mietta Foundation.
He has written a successful children’s book, Matilda and the Dragon (Allen & Unwin) and a book of essays on language and etymology, Wordwatching - field notes from an amateur philologist, (Scribe, 2004). He compiled a book of letters written by asylum seekers held in Australia’s detention camps. The book, From Nothing to Zero was published in 2003 by Lonely Planet.
In 2004 he was elected as a Living National Treasure.
His latest book Watching Brief, a collection of essays about the justice system and human rights, was published in November 2007.
He is married to artist Kate Durham.
Professor Ivan Diamond A.B., B.S., M.D., Ph.D.
CV Therapeutics
Dr. Diamond is Vice President for Neuroscience at CV Therapeutics. He is also Professor Emeritus of Neurology, Neuroscience, Paediatrics, Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, and Founding Director of the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Diamond is a member of the Board of Trustees of ABMRF/The Foundation for Alcohol Research and has been chair of the ABMRF Medical Advisory Council. He is the Editor in Chief of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. Dr. Diamond received his M.D. degree and his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, followed by residency training in Neurology. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Diamond is a board certified neurologist and has been a faculty member at UCSF since 1969. He is author or co-author of over 160 publications, a member of many distinguished biomedical organizations, and was president of the Research Society on Alcoholism (1995-1997). His honors include the Distinguished Researcher Award from the Research Society on Alcoholism (1994), a National Institutes of Health MERIT Award (1995-2005), a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Chicago School of Medicine (1996), election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1998), and an elected Member of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives (2000). Dr. Diamond joined CVT to accelerate the development of a new medication for treating alcoholism and cocaine, heroin and nicotine addiction. The first clinical trials of this novel small molecule are planned for 2009.
Dr Glen O. Gabbard, M.D
Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas
Glen O. Gabbard, M.D. is Brown Foundation Chair of Psychoanalysis and Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He is the former Joint Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and a former Associate Editor of American Journal of Psychiatry. He is the author or editor of 22 books, including Psychodynamic Psychiatry in Clinical Practice: 4th Edition, Gabbard’s Treatments of Psychiatric Disorders: 4th Edition, and The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Psychotherapeutic Treatments. He is the author of 290 papers and book chapters, and has received numerous honors. These include the Mary Sigourney Award in 2000 for outstanding contributions to psychoanalysis, the 2004 American Psychiatric Association Adolf Meyer Award, and the 2008 Cornell-Westchester Borderline Personality Disorder Resource Center Award for distinguished contributions to the field of severe personality disorders.
Associate Professor Mohan Issac
University of Western Australia
Mohan Isaac is currently Associate Chair of Population Mental Health at the School of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, The University of Western Australia, and Consultant Psychiatrist, Fremantle Hospital and Health Services, Fremantle.
Prior to joining the University of Western Australia, Mohan was Professor and Head of the Department of Psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) Bangalore, India. Mohan has assisted the World Health Organization in various capacities and on numerous occasions in different parts of the world including in countries such as Afghanistan. Mohan assists numerous international organizations on matters related to public health aspects of mental health and has assisted the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) as a consultant based in Jordan. Mohan’s most recent visiting consultancy assignment is with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila on a project on ‘Psychosocial Health of Conflict Affected Populations in Sri Lanka’.
Professor Nick Martin
The Bancroft Centre, Brisbane, Queensland
Nick Martin graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1972 and obtained his PhD in Genetics at the University of Birmingham. In 1978 he returned to a Research Fellowship at the Australian National University where he played a major role in founding the Australian Twin Registry which he has used in a series of very large twin studies of personality, intelligence, alcoholism, asthma and endometriosis that have made important findings and set international standards for power and rigour. After 3 years in the US he returned in 1986 to the Queensland Institute of Medical Research where he heads the Genetic Epidemiology Laboratory. His current interest is in linkage and association methods to locate genes of major effect (QTLs) on complex traits including melanoma, depression and alcoholism. He has attracted major funding from NIH, EU, NMHRC, a CRC, and industry and heads a research group of over 70.
Professor Mark Williams
University of Oxford, UK
Mark Williams is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Wellcome Principal Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. His research is concerned with psychological models and treatment of depression and suicidal behaviour, particularly the application of experimental cognitive psychology to understanding the processes that increase risk of suicidal behaviour in depression. With colleagues John Teasdale (Cambridge) and Zindel Segal (Toronto) he developed Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for prevention of relapse and recurrence in depression. His current research focuses on whether a similar approach can help people suffering from bipolar disorder and to prevent suicidal ideation and behaviour during a depressive episode.
His articles focus on the way that autobiographical memory biases and deficits may act as the critical mediator of current and future vulnerability. His books include The Psychological Treatment of Depression (Routledge, 1992), Cry of Pain: understanding suicide and self harm (Penguin, 1997) Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A new approach to preventing relapse (Guilford, 2002, with Z. Segal and J.D. Teasdale) and The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness (Guilford, 2007, with J.D. Teasdale, Z.V. Segal and J. Kabat-Zinn).
