Adjunct Professor Karleen Gribble, PhD, BRurSc(Hons)

Karleen Gribble is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Western Sydney University. Her interests include infant and young child feeding in emergencies, child rights, caregiver-child and child-caregiver attachment, and treatment of infants within the child protection and criminal justice systems. She has published research, provided media commentary, contributed to government enquiries, provided expert opinion for courts, and engaged in training of health professionals, social workers, and humanitarian workers on these subjects. Karleen passionately advocates for recognition of the importance of mothers to their infants and works to create environments that support breastfeeding and the mother-infant relationship, particularly in situations of adversity. In recent years, Karleen has become concerned about the prioritisation of gender identity over sex in language and data collection and the impact of this on women and children and the ethical conduct of research. She has written a number of papers and book chapters on this and coordinated responses to two NHMRC consultations addressing sexed and desexed language and data collection on sex and gender identity that were supported by over 200 Australian academics clinicians, health advocates and women’s health organisations.