Our people

Mark Alfano uses tools and methods from philosophy, psychology, and computer science to explore topics in social epistemology, moral psychology, and digital humanities. He studies how people become and remain virtuous, how values become integrated into people's lives, and how these virtues and values are (or fail to be) manifested in their perception, thoughts, feelings, deliberations, and actions. One of the guiding themes of his work is that normative philosophy without psychological content is empty, but scientific investigation without philosophical insight is blind. Currently an Associate Professer in Macquarie University's Department of Philosophy, Mark received a doctorate from the Philosophy Program of the City University of New York Graduate Center (CUNY GC) in 2011. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study and the Princeton University Center for Human Values, as well as assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon, associate professor of ethics & philosophy of technology at Delft University of Technology, and professorial fellow at Australian Catholic University.

Amy Barrow is Associate Professor at Macquarie Law School and a member of the Macquarie University Ethics and Agency Research Centre.  Amy's research explores how institutional mechanisms, laws and rights activism can be used to advance equality and non-discrimination in society. In her work on these topics, Amy examines how international legal standards filter down from the macro to the micro level. Within her scholarship, Amy researches law in action by drawing on qualitative research methods to consider how international laws and policies are implemented in practice by multiple actors. Amy aims to extend theorising about the promise of law, as well as its limitations, particularly in highly context-specific situations such as in societies experiencing transition.  Amy is a member of the WILPF Academic Network, a think tank connecting academics and gender, peace and security activists as well as a founding coalition member of the Every Woman Treaty campaign, which grew out of the Initiative on Violence against Women at the Harvard Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Prior to joining Macquarie Law School Amy held posts in the Faculty of Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and in the School of Law, University of Manchester, United Kingdom.

Dr Ebony Birchall is a Lecturer at Macquarie Law School, Deputy Director of the BHR Access to Justice Lab (A2J Lab), Executive Board Member of Macquarie University's Ethics and Agency Research Centre, and Lawyer on Macquarie University's Ethics Committee. Ebony runs Macquarie Law School's Strategic Litigation Clinic, which provides the opportunity for law students to design strategic litigation on a range of social justice issues, with assistance from leading Australian litigators. She convenes two law subjects: Refugee Law and The Law of Torts. She also supervises several honours and post graduate research students.  Ebony is a researcher with impact, as recognised through her success in securing several research prizes and grants, including the Macquarie University's Emerging Scholar Award for Research with Impact in 2022. Her area of research focus relates to challenging human rights abuse by powerful actors such as business and governments. Her work is motivated to strengthen legal and non-legal mechanisms for overcoming power imbalances, with the aim of improving access to justice. Detailed information on the research projects Ebony is working on with the A2J Lab can be found here. She is also currently working on two books, the first on the harmful impacts of deterrence ideology on the human rights of refugees, and the second on strategic litigation in Australia.  Prior to joining Macquarie University, Ebony practised as a human rights lawyer for over a decade. Her litigation practice was at the forefront of Australian-based strategic litigation. Cases included the Manus Island Class Action, Australia’s largest human rights case at the time of resolution, which resulted in the Australian Government and several businesses who operated the detention facility paying $90million in compensation and costs. She also acted on behalf of almost 10,000 people from refugee backgrounds in the 2014 Immigration Data Breach Litigation, the first matter to use Australian privacy legislation to achieve accountability through compensation for a mass privacy breach. Other cases include the Essure Contraceptive Device Class Action and the Strip Search Class Action against NSW Police.  Ebony partners with several community legal centres and advocacy networks. She has appeared in all of Australia’s major media outlets and is a sought-after speaker at community/advocacy events. She holds a PhD in law, and undergraduate degrees in law and business from the University of Wollongong. She completed postgraduate studies in human rights at the University of Sydney, and studied international human rights law (business and human rights) at the University of Oxford. 

Professor Paul Formosa is the Head of the Department of Philosophy at Macquarie University and co-Director for the Macquarie University Ethics and Agency Research Centre (previously known as CAVE). Paul has been at Macquarie since 2009, and has been a Macquarie University Research Fellow, an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow, and CI on various ARC Discovery Projects and industry funded research. Paul has also been an elected member of the University Senate and the Faculty Board and previously served as Department HDR and MRes Director.

Katrina Hutchison is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy. Her research focuses on topics in feminist philosophy, bioethics and moral psychology. A significant strand in her research is the investigation of gender bias, including the underrepresentation of women in surgical careers and academic philosophy. She is co-editor of the book Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change? (Oxford University Press, 2013) which has informed current efforts to improve the climate of philosophy for women. Another major strand in her research is topics in surgical ethics, including the ethics of innovative surgical procedures and implantable medical devices. She was involved in the development of the Macquarie Surgical Innovation Identification Tool (MSIIT) which has been used to inform policy on safely introducing surgical innovations. Her surgical ethics research has been published in leading bioethics and surgical journals, including Annals of Surgery, Bioethics and Journal of Medical Ethics.  Her current ARC DECRA project reflects her interests in both surgical ethics and feminist philosophy. It focuses on the impact of epistemic injustice and cumulative micro-inequities on women's surgical careers. Dr Hutchison often makes use of qualitative empirical methods alongside traditional methods of analytic philosophy, with the aim of delivering philosophical work that reflects lived experience and can inform policy and practice.

I am a field philosopher who investigates questions in science and medicine. My current research focuses on 3 main areas. First, on animal ethics and epistemology (reconceptualizing how we think about nonhuman animals in research to improve their treatment); second on the ethics of surgical innovation (identifying ethical issues and proposing solutions to improve patient care); and finally, ethics of One Health and emerging infectious diseases (developing normative resources to support implementation of One Health approaches). My work demonstrates a commitment to the vulnerable and to research that improves lives, whether of patients undergoing innovative surgery or animals used as part of research.

Rita is an international expert in technology and intellectual property law, with a recent focus on legal regulation and governance of Artificial Intelligence technologies. She acquired her PhD degree from Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg/Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law (Germany, suma cum lauda) in 2010. Since then she researched and lectured in universities in Japan, Germany, Lithuania, and Australia. To date, she published over 60 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, as well as a monograph on Applicable Law to Copyright Infringement: A Comparison of ALI and CLIP Principles. Rita is regularly invited to present in conferences in Europe, South and North America, and Asia, and has prepared reports for the European Commission, European Patent Office, and the governments of Australia, South Korea and Lithuania.   Rita has led projects on 'Government Use of Face Recognition Technologies: Legal Challenges and Solutions' (Lithuanian Research Council grant) and 'Towards Explainable AI in Healthare' (Macquarie University Research Acceleration Scheme), and was an investigator at the NSW Ombudsman project 'Mapping Automated Decision Making Tools in Administrative Decision Making in NSW' (led by Prof Kimberlee Weatherall). Previously she was a recipient of a research grant by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science for her project on 'The Law Applicable to Copyright'. She is a Lead of the Emerging Technologies Workstream at the Australian Society for Computers and Law (AUSCL), a member of Australia Standards, Committee IT-043, a Lead of the Explainable AI research stream at the Centre for Applied Artificial Intelligence at Macquarie University, an affiliate of ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making, a member of Macquarie University Agency and Ethics Research Centre and the Intellectual Property Association of Australia and New Zealand (IPSANZ).  Rita is willing to supervise student projects in the areas of technology and intellectual property law, especially in the area of AI and law.