Co-Chairs

Maura Ryan is the John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C. Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, and Associate Dean for the Humanities and Faculty Affairs at the University Notre Dame. Her primary interests are bioethics and health policy, feminist ethics, and fundamental moral theology. Her book Ethics and Economics of Assisted Reproduction: The Cost of Longing was published by Georgetown Press in 2001. A co-edited volume, A Just and True Love: Feminism at the Frontiers of Theological Ethics, was published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2007.

Abdulaziz Sachedina, IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies at the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies, George Mason University. Dr. Sachedina has conducted research in the field of Islamic Law and Theology for more than two decades. In the last ten years he has concentrated on social and political ethics, including interfaith and intrafaith Relations and Islamic biomedical ethics. He is the author of the pioneering study, Islamic Biomedical Ethics: Principles and Application (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Participants

Charles C. Camosy, Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Fordham University, whose writing addresses the ethical complexities of stem cell research, the treatment of critically ill newborns and related bioethical issues.

Thomas Eich, Professor of Islamic Studies at Hamburg University in Germany, is trained as a social historian of the 19th century Middle East and classical Arabic and Islamic studies, with a longstanding interest in bioethics.

Sherine Hamdy, Anthropologist at Brown University with longstanding interests in cross-cultural approaches to medicine, health, and the body. Her research has centered on ethical debates around organ transplantation in the Egyptian cities of Tanta, Mansoura, and Cairo.

Damian Howard, SJ is Lecturer in Theology at Heythrop College, University of London. His research engages with Islamic theology and contemporary Islamic thought, drawing parallels and contrasts with the concepts and experiences that shape the Christian tradition.

Ebrahim Moosa, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame and co-director of Contending Modernities, whose research interests span classical and modern Islamic thought with a special focus on Islamic law, history, ethics and theology. He has published a number of articles on bioethical issues dealing with the human body and end of life decisions.

Robert Tappan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Towson University, whose research explores Shiite scholarship in the field of Islamic bioethics.