Lynn Gillam

Professor Lynn Gillam is Professor in Health Ethics in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne. She serves as Academic Director and Clinical Ethicist at the Children’s Bioethics Centre, Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, where she leads clinical ethics consultations, ethics rounds, education sessions, and policy advice. Originally trained in philosophy with an MA from Oxford University in 1988 and in bioethics with a PhD from Monash University in 2000, she has been involved in over 200 ethics consultations at the Royal Children’s Hospital since 2005. Her research specializations encompass paediatric clinical ethics, including end-of-life decision-making, management of differences of sex development, information-giving to seriously ill children, fertility preservation for prepubertal children undergoing gonadotoxic treatment, parental refusal of treatment, and the use of high-cost investigational drugs. She developed the world’s first ethical framework for decision-making about a child’s future fertility in the context of chemotherapy and introduced the 'Zone of Parental Discretion' concept in her 2016 publication 'The zone of parental discretion: An ethical tool for dealing with disagreement between parents and doctors about medical treatment for a child,' which is widely used in clinical bioethics discussions. Other key publications include 'Fifty years of paediatric ethics' (2015), 'Ethics at the end of life: Who should make decisions about treatment limitation for young children with life-threatening or life-limiting conditions?' (2011), and 'Critical dialogue method of ethics consultation: making clinical ethics facilitation visible and accessible' (2025).

At the University of Melbourne, Professor Gillam teaches medical ethics in the Doctor of Medicine curriculum and supervises PhD, Masters, and Honours students. She chairs the University’s Central Human Research Ethics Committee and serves on advisory bodies such as the Victorian Independent Medical Advisory Committee on Medicinal Cannabis and the NHMRC Clinical Ethics Working Group. Her contributions have been recognized with the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2019 for service to medical education in bioethics, the Royal Children’s Hospital Chairman’s Medal in 2018, and the William G. Bartholome Award for Ethical Excellence from the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2025. Her work has significantly influenced paediatric ethics practice and policy both nationally and internationally.

Professional Email: lynn.gillam@rch.org.au