Professor Ann Gallagher
Professor/Head of Department of Health Sciences

Summary

Professor Gallagher is a national and international leader in the field of ethics and care. She is committed to professional education, innovation, research and scholarship that contribute to excellence in health and social care.

As Professor and Head of the Department of Health Sciences, Brunel University of London, Ann applies leadership and management experience to six subject areas: global public health, nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, social work and workforce development.  Ann works with local and global partners to facilitate enriching learning experiences for students and impactful research and scholarship. She is committed to operationalising innovative interprofessional education  and parity of esteem amongst diverse professions and disciplines in research and scholarship.

Ann’s professional career began at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, during ‘The Troubles’, where she qualified as a general/adult nurse. She achieved registration as a mental health nurse at West Park Hospital in Epsom and went on to manage a regional adolescent day unit. Ann was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal College of Nursing in 2018, the highest RCN award for services to nursing, demonstrating an outstanding professional profile and commitment to care. Ann is highly experienced in educational leadership and development including co-leading the award-winning practice-based learning nursing course at the Open University and, later, co-production of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) ‘Ethical Decision-Making in Care’.

Ann was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2018, enabling collaboration with the Bioethics team at Tuskegee University in Alabama, and a Hastings Center Fellowship in 2021. She is Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Nursing Ethics (first quartile journal in ethics and nursing with 2025 impact factor of 2.7) and Fellow of the Hastings Center. Ann is author of over 190 publications including 9 books (co-authored, co-edited and single authored). She has research collaborations with regulators and international scholars, has been expert Code advisor to the International Council of Nurses and is co-organiser of annual international nursing ethics conferences. Ann has extensive experience of a range of research methodologies, PhD supervision and national and international research and education collaborations, generating over £1m of funding. Previous university senior leadership roles have included Chair of the University of Surrey Research Ethics Committee and Animal Welfare and Ethics Committee and Clinical Ethics Committees.

Ann is Visiting Professor at the University of Genoa. She was a working group member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in-depth inquiry on the ‘Future of Ageing’ (see The future of ageing - The Nuffield Council on Bioethics (nuffieldbioethics.org)). Her single authored book Slow Ethics and the Art of Care was described as ‘accessible and incredibly moving, its lessons are profoundly relevant to the changing world we find ourselves in. Every hospital, every care agency, every funding body should have this book in their library & put its lessons into practice’.