Professor Carla Treloar is Deputy Director and Head of the Hepatitis Research group at the Centre for Social Research in Health at The University of New South Wales. Carla has been a member of the NSW and the Australian Ministerial Advisory Committee on blood-borne viruses and STIs and a member of numerous advisory committees for government, health agencies and non-government organisations. She is a board member of the International Journal of Drug Policy and an associate editor for Addiction. She has published over 140 peer review articles and been awarded over $15 million in research funding.

Carla is committed to the effective translation of research into policy and practice and to ethical and respectful conduct of research in close collaboration with affected communities. Her research encompasses the social aspects of drug use in relation to the prevention of drug-related harms particularly blood-borne viruses, engagement of people who use drugs in health and other services, critical analysis of the structure and operation of services for people who use drugs and societal attitudes towards drug use and people who use drugs.

Dr Marianne Jauncey is a Public Health Physician who has worked at the pointy end of harm reduction for decades. She has been the Medical Director of the Uniting Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) since 2008.

She has been instrumental in a number of the service’s achievements. MSIC receives increased community and political support and in 2010 became a permanent service. The MSIC now has an active consumer action group that goes from strength to strength. The Uniting Church formally decided to advocate for drug law reform and launched their campaign at Town Hall with Richard Branson in 2018. A primary care service for people who inject is soon to open upstairs above MSIC, and MSIC itself has been present for 1.25 million injections without a single death, intervening in over 10,000 overdoses.

Dr Jauncey is committed to ensuring Uniting MSIC provides unwavering support and meets the needs of its clients beyond merely supervised injection. She is not afraid to speak up or bang a few tables where it is needed. She has conducted many media interviews to improve understanding of harm reduction and the nature drug use, and is always willing to get people talking

Associate Professor Kate Seear is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Principal Research Fellow in the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University. She is also a practising solicitor.

Kate has a multidisciplinary background in sociology, gender and law. She is the author of four books and more than 70 academic publications, exploring topics such as the links between alcohol, other drugs, stigma and the law; harm reduction and the law; and drugs, gender, and human rights. Her most recent book is Law, drugs and the making of addiction: Just habits (London: Routledge) and was the winner of the UK's prestigious Socio-Legal Studies Association's History and Theory book prize. Kate is also the Co-Editor of the journal Contemporary Drug Problems. speaker.