Register here to join our In Conversation Live with Professor Celia Kitzinger
Professor Celia Kitzinger, Academic Psychologist and Honorary Professor at the School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University, will be joining Professor Roger Kirby, RSM President, for a conversation about her career, how a devastating family injury influenced her research and work in coma and disorders of consciousness, mental capacity and advance decisions, and her experience of observing court hearings as co-Founder of the Open Justice Court of Protection Project during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Celia has a 40-year career in academic psychology, her research has encompassed three main areas: gender and sexuality; conversation analysis and medical communication; and prolonged disorders of consciousness and end of life decision-making. Her most recent scholarly publications (mostly ‘open access’) can be downloaded here.
She is currently a prolific blogger on mental capacity issues, her involvement in issues relating to mental capacity and the Court of Protection derives from family experience, since her sister Polly Kitzinger’s devastating brain injury in 2009 (click here).
Celia is co-Director (with her sister, Jenny Kitzinger) of the Coma and Disorders of Consciousness Research Centre, co-Director and co-Founder (with disability rights activist, Gill Loomes-Quinn) of the Open Justice Court of Protection Project, and co-Founder (with her wife, Sue Wilkinson) of the charity, Advance Decisions Assistance.
In her work for the Open Justice Court of Protection Project, Celia has watched nearly 200 court hearings - including many about life-sustaining medical treatment, with doctors and other healthcare professionals giving evidence in court. She has seen; a court decide to take a man off a ventilator and withdraw clinically assisted nutrition and hydration with his 3 daughters in Canada pleading that he be kept alive long enough to visit him; an experienced neurologist give evidence on behalf of the Christian Lawyers Association to try to preserve the life of a man in a vegetative state; and judges make decisions about whether or not people with schizophrenia who have gangrenous legs should be allowed to refuse amputation, or an anorexic a feeding tube. Celia believes these hearings give an extraordinary insight into medico-legal ethics in action, and that they are an education and all healthcare professionals should take advantage of the opportunity to go or listen to them.
Celia contributes to many professional working parties, including the British Medical Association core editorial group that produced the national guidance on clinically assisted nutrition and hydration; the Royal College of Physicians guidelines development group for national guidelines on prolonged disorders of consciousness; and the Lancet Commission on the Value of Death.
Celia is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and recipient of a BPS Lifetime Achievement Award.
You can follow Celia on @KitzingerCelia and @OpenJusticeCOP.
*There may be slight changes to the advertised start and end times of this webinar, subject to Professor Kitzinger’s work requirements.
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Disclaimer: All views expressed in this webinar are of the speakers themselves and not of the RSM.
The In Conversation Live webinar series will continue our much loved In Conversation events, giving you the opportunity to get first-hand insights into the lives and thoughts of high profile individuals, bringing an intimate, relaxed and entertaining perspective into your living room.
The RSM In Conversation Live series form part of our new philanthropic initiative. All donations from this series directly fund the RSM's vision to advance health through education and innovation.
This webinar will be recorded and stored by the Royal Society of Medicine and may be distributed in future on various internet channels.
