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Bernadette is a member of the staff of the Plunkett Centre for Ethics at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, and Reader in Philosophy at Australian Catholic University.
Bernadette studied at the University of Melbourne and the University of Cambridge. In 1991 she was awarded an Australian Post-Doctoral Research Scholarship (to bring an Aristotelian approach to Australian medical education) and in 1993 was appointed Foundation Director of the John Hubert Plunkett Centre for Ethics at St Vincent's Hospital. She previously taught English at Tottenham Technical School in Melbourne and Philosophy at Mercy Teachers' College in Melbourne.
Bernadette is Adjunct Professor, St Vincent's Clinical School, UNSW Medicine. She has been a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life since 2018.
Her philosophical interests are in medical ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of religion and philosophy of education.
Bernadette has served on various committees and boards associated with medical practice, in particular the Australian Health Ethics Committee from 1994 to 2003 (where she chaired its Transplantation Ethics Working Party and its Committee to Revise the Ethical Guidelines on Assisted Reproductive Technology) and the Garvan Medical Research Institute from 2004 to 2016.
She was a member of the Council of St John's College in the University of Sydney from 2012 to 2022, and its chair from 2013 to 2020.
In 2016 she was appointed an Officer in General Division of the Order of Australia. In 2017 she was appointed a Dame Grand Cross in the Order of St Gregory the Great.
Philosophy of education, philosophy of religion, ethics, bioethics
Guest editor (with Steve Matthews). Special issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 2016
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