Rate My Professor Bronwyn Parry

Professor Bronwyn Parry serves as Dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences and Professor at The Australian National University, positions she assumed in November 2022. She also holds the role of University Lead for Social Impact. Parry completed her PhD in Human Geography at the University of Cambridge in 1997, having earlier earned honours in sociology with a University Medal and Commonwealth Scholarship. Her distinguished career trajectory includes Junior Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge from 1997 to 2004; Reader in Cultural and Economic Geography at Queen Mary University of London starting in 2004; and at King’s College London, where in 2012 she was appointed Chair in Global Health and Social Medicine, founded the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, became inaugural Head of the School of Global Affairs, served as Vice Principal and Vice President for Service from 2020 to 2022, and directed the King’s Sanctuary Programme addressing global forced displacement. Parry is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), former editor of Economy and Society, and an elected member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics from 2007 to 2013. She has consulted for the United Nations and UK government on international regulatory regimes.

Parry's research focuses on the social, ethical, and legal implications of emerging technologies in the life sciences, including the commodification of bio-information, assisted reproduction, regenerative medicine, biosurveillance, posthumanism, and cryotechnologies. Notable publications include Trading the Genome: Investigating the Commodification of Bio-information (2004), Bioinformation (2017, with Beth Greenhough), Mind Over Matter: Memory, Forgetting, Brain Donation and the Search for Cures for Dementia (2011), and articles such as 'Surrogate labour: exceptional for whom?' (2018, Economy and Society), 'Regulation of surrogacy in India: whenceforth now?' (2018, BMJ Global Health), and 'Assisted dying—ethical complexity is no reason not to change the law' (2018, BMJ Opinion). In 2023, she led an interdisciplinary team awarded a €10 million European Research Council Synergy Grant for the six-year CULTCRYO project, the first for an Australian social scientist, examining cooling infrastructures' contributions to global warming. Her contributions extend to founding the Australian Refugee Welcome University Sponsorship Consortium, promoting equity and inclusion in higher education, and advancing social policy research through the POLIS Centre for Social Policy Research at ANU.