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KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Dr Siobhán O’Sullivan is a Senior Policy Analyst at Ireland’s National Economic and Social Council (NESC), the national advisory body to the Prime Minister and the Irish Government.
She was the author of the 2026 NESC report ‘Artificial Intelligence in Service of Society: Navigating Our Way Forward’, and is a member of the working group established by the Irish Health Information and Quality Authority to develop National Guidance for the Responsible and Safe use of Artificial Intelligence in Health and Social Care Services.
Dr O’Sullivan previously served as Executive Director of the Royal Irish Academy and holds an Honorary Associate Professorship at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, where she teaches healthcare ethics and law.
From 2011 to 2022, she served as Chief Bioethics Officer at the Irish Department of Health, where she helped shape Ireland’s national response to ethical issues in health and biomedicine, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. She previously served as Director of the Irish Council for Bioethics from 2002 to 2010.
At the international level, Dr O’Sullivan was Chair of the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee for Human Rights in the Fields of Biomedicine and Health (CDBIO) and Chair of the working group responsible for developing the Council of Europe’s new “Strategic Action Plan for Human Rights in Biomedicine and Health (2026-2030)”. She has also served as Vice-Chair of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies, an independent body that advises the President of the European Commission.
She currently chairs the British Medical Journal Ethics Committee and serves as an ethics adviser to the European Medicines Agency’s Network Data Steering Group. Throughout her career, she has contributed extensively to policy, legislation and education at the intersection of science, human rights, and society.
Dr O’Sullivan received her Doctor of Medicine degree from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and also holds master’s degrees in Healthcare Ethics and Law and in Human Rights Law.
Marie-Claire Foblets is Director of the Department of Law and Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, which she founded in 2012. She is also Honorary Professor at both Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and Leipzig University. Before joining the Max Planck Society, she was a full-time professor at the Faculty of Law at KU Leuven, where she headed the Institute for Migration Law and Legal Anthropology. She also held part-time professorships at the University of Antwerp and the Catholic University of Brussels, teaching social and cultural anthropology for more than twenty years.
Professor Foblets is a member of numerous academic networks, including the Association française d’anthropologie du droit (AFAD), of which she served as co-president for several years. She has coordinated a wide range of research projects in Europe and beyond, many of which have brought together legal scholars and anthropologists to examine, from an interdisciplinary perspective, questions of religious and cultural diversity and the ways in which state law addresses them.
In 2001, she was elected a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB). In 2004, she was awarded the Francqui Prize, Belgium’s most prestigious academic distinction in the humanities. She received honorary doctorates from the Faculty of Law at Université Saint-Louis in Brussels in 2016 and from the Faculty of Law at Uppsala University in Sweden in 2019. In February 2015, she became a full member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Philological-Historical Class).
Amina Yakhlaf is a PhD researcher in Medical Sociology at the University of Antwerp and a member of the interdisciplinary MEDIMIG project. Her research focuses on medical decision-making in culturally diverse contexts, with particular attention to religion, family involvement, mental health, migration, and health inequalities. Through both qualitative and quantitative research, she examines how social, cultural, and religious factors shape healthcare experiences and medical decision-making.
Her work bridges research and practice to promote culturally responsive healthcare. She aims to inform healthcare professionals, policymakers, and legal scholars on how religious and ethical diversity influences patient preferences and decision-making, ultimately contributing to more inclusive and equitable healthcare systems.
Professor Gamal I. Serour is Professor
of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Director of the International Islamic Center for
Population Studies and Research at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. He previously
served as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Al-Azhar University and is currently
a member of Al-Azhar’s Islamic Research Academy.
Professor Serour is President of the Egyptian Fertility and Sterility Society and President of the Board of Directors of the Egyptian IVF Center in Cairo. He is a Past President of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) and Immediate Past-President of the African Federation of Fertility Societies.
He has held numerous senior positions in international bioethics and health research. He has served as a member of UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee (IBC) and Intergovernmental Bioethics Committee (IGBC), chaired the FIGO Committee for the Ethical Aspects of Human Reproduction and Women’s Health, and co-chaired the Eastern Mediterranean Research Ethics Review Committee of the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean. He also served as a member and Chair of the WHO Scientific and Technical Advisory Group for the Human Reproduction Programme. He chaired the Guideline Development Group responsible for WHO’s 2025 guideline on the prevention of female genital mutilation. He established Egypt’s first Health Research Bioethics Committee at Al-Azhar University in 1995 and served on the country’s first National Bioethics Committee from its establishment in 1996 until 2010.
A pioneer of reproductive medicine in Egypt, Professor Serour co-founded the country’s first IVF centre in 1986 and helped deliver Egypt’s first IVF baby in 1987. He has published extensively on reproductive medicine and bioethics and has contributed chapters to several international books on bioethics.
Under his directorship, the International Islamic Center for Population Studies and Research received the 2013 United Nations Population Award. His other distinctions include the 2018 Nile Award for Medical Science and the 2020 Aziza Hussein and Mary Assaad Award for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation,
Dr Naoual El Yattouti is a
researcher specialising in the intersection of health law and human rights. She
recently completed her PhD, titled “Negotiating Healthcare Provider Identity:
Religious Dress and Patient Identity-Based Choice through a Substantive
Equality Lens”, at the Faculty of Law of the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
She is currently preparing to undertake postdoctoral research on religious
diversity in healthcare within the Antwerp Cusa Chair in Health Law and
Religious Diversity. Her work aims to provide a framework that enables
healthcare institutions to develop more inclusive policies and practices.
Her work has been recognised through the First Laureate Prize for her master’s thesis, “Concordant Care: Patient Right or Discrimination?”, awarded by the Belgian Journal of Health Law in 2021, as well as the Young Scientist Award for Best Poster Presentation presented by the World Association for Medical Law in 2022. In 2025, she was selected as one of five nominees for the Eos Pipet, an award recognising a young scientist in Flanders whose work makes an essential contribution to scientific research. From autumn 2026, Dr El Yattouti will serve as holder of the Antwerp Cusa Chair in Health Law and Religious Diversity and will teach sociology at the Faculty of Law of the University of Antwerp. In addition to her academic work, she serves on the editorial board of EHRC Updates.