This free panel is on Respectful maternity care: Discussing birth trauma and obstetric violence and will feature Hazel Keedle, Bashi Kumar-Hazard and Alecia Staines.

Panelists
Dr Hazel Keedle, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer of Midwifery at The School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western Sydney University. Hazel has more than two decades of experience as a clinician in nursing and midwifery, educator and researcher. Hazel’s research interests are vaginal birth after caesarean, birth trauma and maternity experiences explored primarily using feminist mixed methodologies. Hazel's work is recognised nationally and internationally, with many invited conference and seminar presentations including academic publications and a book for women based on her PhD findings ‘Birth after Caesarean: Your Journey to a Better Birth’. Hazel is the lead researcher on the largest maternity experiences survey, The Birth Experience Study.

Bashi Kumar-Hazard is an Australian lawyer and the principal of B W Law, a legal practice established to support and assist women and children, and the Legal Director of the ANZ arm of the Human Rights in Childbirth (HRiC) International Lawyers Network. Bashi’s background is in competition and consumer law, and litigation, developed while working for several years with Allens in Sydney, immediately after graduating with first class honours in Law and Economics from the University of Sydney. Under her maiden surname, Kumar, Bashi has written and spoken on issues relating to competition and trade practices law, legal professional privilege, and the ethics of free speech and philosophy of law. Bashi’s focus in law expanded soon after she had her first child. From her own experiences, Bashi became aware of the widespread impact of current obstetric models of care on the emotional health and wellbeing of mothers. That awareness took her back to working with fundamental ethical principles and human rights law, and forming networks with human rights lawyers in the USA, Netherlands, UK and Europe, with whom she now works closely to develop a legal discourse about the human rights of women in pregnancy and childbirth. Since then, Bashi has presented papers and keynote speeches at many significant conferences on the topic of human rights in childbirth.

Alecia Staines is a consumer representative from Maternity Consumer Network who lives in the Sunshine Coast, QLD. She's been in the advocacy space for 12 years and is a classroom teacher, mother-of-5, and HypnoBirthing educator. In 2022, Alecia co-created Australia's 1st Respectful Maternity Care training with Bashi Kumar-Hazard and Dr Heather Mattner. When she's not teaching, volunteering, or mothering, she loves the beach, snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef and travelling.

Hannah Dahlen AM is the Professor of Midwifery, Discipline Leader of Midwifery and Associate Dean (Research and Higher Degree Research) in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western Sydney University. She has been a midwife for 30 years. Hannah has over 200 published journal articles and book chapters and has a strong national and international reputation in maternal health. She is a renowned speaker, public commentator and birth activist. In 2019 Hannah was awarded a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia (General Division) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list and In November 2012 Hannah was named in the Sydney Morning Herald’s list of 100 “people who change our city for the better” and named as one of the leading “science and knowledge thinkers” for 2012.