Hello! it's me Mel! I am one of the hosts of The Great Birth Rebellion podcast, run The Assembly of Rebellious Midwives and I'm your hostess for this convergence of rebellious midwives. 

Since 2009 I have been a private midwife practicing in the Blue Mountains. My PhD looked at "Birthing Outside the System: wanting the best and safest" (why women choose to birth at home with no medical care). And I am an a mission to help establish more privately practicing midwives in Australia through my mentorship.

I am a researcher at Western Sydney University, where I previously lectured, I have reviewed academic journals and was a project officer at the Australian College of Midwives.

I also have a degree in Naturopathy and, although I don't work as a Naturopath anymore, I  incorporate alternative therapies and nutritional guidance into the care that I give my clients.

I am married with two children born at home. Our family maintains a permaculture homestead in the Blue Mountains where we grow food, keep goats for milk and chickens for eggs.  

Instagram: @melaniethemidwife

Stu came to teach us and invite exploration into the practical skills of breech birth.

Dr. Fischbein is home birth obstetrician in Southern California, and has served as a backup consultant to many home and birthing center midwives for 25 years. In 2004, he co-authored the book, “Fearless Pregnancy, Wisdom & Reassurance from a Doctor, a Midwife and a Mom.” For his efforts he has been awarded the Doulas Association of Southern California (DASC) Physician of the year award three times and, in 2008, was the very first recipient of DASC’s lifetime achievement award in support of pregnant women. He has spoken internationally on breech and vaginal birth after cesarean section and has appeared in many documentaries, including: “More Business of Being Born”, “Happy Healthy Child”, “Reducing Infant Mortality”, “Heads Up: The Disappearing Art of Vaginal Breech Delivery” and multiple YouTube videos discussing birth choices and respect for patient autonomy and decision making.

Dr. Fischbein now practices community based birthing and works directly with home birthing midwives www.birthinginstincts.com to offer hope for those women who prefer and respect a natural birthing environment and cannot find supportive practitioners for VBAC, twin and breech deliveries. He is an outspoken advocate of informed decision making, the midwifery model of care and human rights in childbirth, receiving the 2016 “Most Audacious” award from HRIC and the Association for Wholistic & Newborn Health. Hear more of his thoughts and advocacy for evidenced-based, reasonable choices on his podcast Birthing Instincts.

Instagram: @birthinginstincts

Hannah Dahlen is the Professor of Midwifery, Associate Dean Research and HDR and Midwifery Discipline Leader in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Western Sydney University. She has been a midwife for 30 years.

Hannah has spoken at over 100 national and international conferences and is a regular keynote speaker.

Hannah has represented midwifery and women through interviews in print, on the radio and TV hundreds of times and is featured in four documentaries. Hannah is a past President of the Australian College of Midwives and received Life Membership in 2008 for outstanding contributions to the profession of Midwifery.

In 2019 Hannah was awarded a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia (General Division) in the Queen’s birthday honours list for her significant services to midwifery, nursing and medical education and research. In November 2012 she was named in the Sydney Morning Herald’s list of 100 “people who change our city for the better”. She has been described as “the leading force promoting natural birth and midwife-led care in Australia.”

Instagram: @hannah.dahlen

Sarah Buckley is trained as a GP/family physician with qualifications in GP-obstetrics and family planning. She is the mother of four home-born children and lives in Brisbane, Australia, where she completed her PhD  at the University of Queensland as well as writing and lecturing on pregnancy, birth, and parenting. 

Dr Buckley’s work critiques current practices in pregnancy, birth, and parenting from the widest possible perspectives, including scientific, anthropological, cross-cultural, psychological, and personal.

Her research is focused on oxytocin in labour and birth and the impacts of interventions.

She is a bestselling author of Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: A Doctor’s Guide to Natural Childbirth and Gentle Early Parenting Choices, 

Dr Buckley has an ongoing interest in the hormones of labour and birth, and this has culminated in her groundbreaking report Hormonal Physiology of Childbearing (2015 Childbirth Connection, a program of the National Partnership for Women and Families). This report, available for free online,  has been described as “…one of the most revolutionary and influential publications on maternity and newborn care ever issued.”

Instagram: @drsarahjbuckley

Dr. Hazel Keedle is a Senior Lecturer of Midwifery at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western Sydney University. She has over two decades of experience as a clinician in nursing and midwifery, education, and research. Her research interests are vaginal birth after caesarean, birth trauma, and maternity experiences, which she explores primarily using feminist mixed methodologies.

Dr. Keedle's work is recognised internationally. She is a regular conference presenter, and her research has been widely published in academic journals and books.

She is the author of the book "Birth after Caesarean: Your Journey to a Better Birth," which is based on her PhD findings. Dr. Keedle is also the lead researcher on the largest maternity experiences survey, The Birth Experience Study.

Dr Keedle is passionate about improving the experiences of women during childbirth. She is committed to using her research to advocate for women's rights and to ensure that all women have access to respectful, supportive maternity care.

Instagram: @hazelkeedle

Liz Newnham is a senior lecturer in Midwifery at the University of Newcastle, whose teaching and research interests centre on cultural and political aspects of birthing practice, and the role of midwives in promoting physiological and humanised birth.

Key areas of interest are birth culture and midwifery practice, maternity policy, labour pain, and ethics. She has published widely and has been an invited speaker at conferences and events in Europe, the UK and Australia.

Her doctoral work was published as the book Towards the humanisation of birth: A study of epidural analgesia and hospital birth culture by Palgrave MacMillan.

Dr. Newnham is active in the midwifery profession, involved with the Midwives Association of Ireland and holding leadership roles in the Australian College of Midwives. 

Instagram: @eliznewnham

Kirsten is a retired specialist obstetrician and gynaecologist who works as an educator, writer, and researcher who founded Birth Small Talk.

Her vision is to promote and protect respectful maternity care for women, babies, families, and their care providers through education and research. She considers the pathways to achieve respectful maternity care are:

• Promotion of physiological birth,
• Ensuring access to timely, appropriate, proven interventions when pathology arises,
• Supporting women’s decisional capacity, and 
• The expansion of midwifery continuity of carer models of care.

Kirsten is critical of the patriarchal values embedded within healthcare systems, and particularly within obstetrics and gynaecology. She is a mother to two lovely grown up people and enjoys reading, sewing, gardening, or cooking. 

Instagram: @birthsmalltalk

Access Kirsten's slides by going here.

Sheryl has been a private practice midwife since 1988, working independently and in midwifery group practice.

She worked in a Birth Centre at Royal Hospital for Women for 15 years. She established the successful, publicly funded homebirth program at the Royal Women’s Hospital, Sydney. Sheryl is coming to the conference to share strategies when setting up a publicly funded homebirth program.

Sheryl is still attending births and also running birth circles with her daughter Abby who is also a midwife.

Instagram: @birthcirclesydney 

Alison is a contemporary dual qualified Midwife and the Chief Midwife for the Australian College of Midwives. With lived clinical experience across WA, VIC, QLD and Kenya, Africa and broad executive and advocacy leadership roles nationally, Alison is motivated to advocate for the continued recognition and advancement of the Midwifery profession.
Drawn to rural and remote midwifery to promote equitable access to midwifery led models of care for all women and families, Alison also has a keen interest in breech birth, birth art and global maternal health, having travelled to many birthing facilities internationally. Alison is inspired to mentor and nurture the future midwifery workforce.
Alison is a mother of 3+1. 3 biological children aged 22, 19 and ‘nearly 6’, and a mother at heart to a beautiful baby boy found by a river 10 years ago in Nakuru, Kenya, still attached to his placenta, whom Alison provided lifesaving skin to skin and around the clock midwifery care and motherly love for his first 10 days of his life.

Rhea is the founder of Birthing Wisdom and author of Birth With Confidence: Savvy choices for normal birth and Beyond the Birth Plan: getting real about pain and power.

Since the birth of her first daughter she has trained as a childbirth educator and counsellor and has been privileged to attend more than one thousand births in hospitals and home settings.

Rhea works with women and their partners and support people through her birth preparation workshops, pre-natal classes, and personal birth counselling sessions. She has presented many seminars around the world.

Her passion is to educate women about the impact of our birth culture on the outcome of our births. Instead of fear, she wants you to go into your labour with confidence in your body and your support people, and the knowledge that will give you the best possibility of natural birth.

Instagram: @rheadempseybirth

Eleanor is the founder of The School of Breathwork  and Co-founder of the epic movement that is The Reconnected and the highly acclaimed Reconnected Parenting program. Bringing breathwork and deep attunement to families lights her up and satisfies her sense of purpose deeply.

She is a registered counsellor, breathworker and play therapist, with a BA of Social Science (Counselling), a BA of Psychology (Hons), a Diploma in Breathwork and a Graduate Diploma in Child Centred Play Therapy. She is also a mother of five wonderful children.

Instagram: @school_of_breathwork.official

@the_reconnected

Athena is the founder of The Birth Counsel. She spent two decades working in and around the maternity care system as a doula, midwife, midwifery researcher and now as a counsellor & psychotherapist. She believes we all need a safe place to talk about what happens to us when we come up close to birth. The Birth Counsel has been created to acknowledge and respond to this need.

Athena will be sharing practical strategies for working through and recovering from workplace trauma and stress

Instagram: @thebirthcounsel

Dr Tane Luna is an Obstetrician working alongside Hygiea Health and will be presenting along with Jane Hardwick Collings. 

Full bio incoming! She's so epic we can't get all the words in!

Instagram: @hygieiahealthltd @janehardwickecollings

Sarah is a Senior Research Fellow, Medical anthropologist, nurse and midwife. Sarah is attending the conference with a special interest in sharing her work on the Djäkamirr: caretaker of pregnancy and birth documentary and the work featured in the film. The convergence has also sponsored Sarah to bring an Indigenous community elder to also speak into the experiences of birthing on country and the challenges facing Indigenous families.   

Dr Sarah Ireland is an early career researcher, with expertise in cross-cultural qualitative research methods, especially collaborative approaches with Aboriginal people. Her research methodologies are informed by social justice, health promotion, decolonising theories, public health, gender, woman-centered midwifery, culture and human rights disclosure.

Sara has a clinical background in remote area nursing and midwifery with experience delivering primary health care in collaboration with First Nations communities and practitioners. Sarah is an early career researcher at the Molly Wardaguga Research Centre; and DJÄKAMIRR is her first incursion into writing for screen and production. 

Ḻäwurrpa is an experienced Yolŋu researcher who was one of the founding members of the research organisation Yalu’ Marŋgithinyaraw. She is Waramirri clan and connects to Galiwin’ku through her father’s father.

Ḻäwurrpa has worked extensively with Charles Darwin University and Menzies School of Health for over twenty years and has skilfully guided many non-Indigenous researchers to work with Yolŋu in ways that are ethical, mutually beneficial, and enable non-Indigenous and Yolŋu to understand each other’s knowledges. In 2013, Charles Darwin University awarded her an Honorary Doctorate. Last year she was a 2024 Northern Territory Senior Australian of the Year Nominee.

Ḻäwurrpa is attending the conference with a special interest in discussing her work on theDjäkamirr: caretaker of pregnancy and birth documentary and the work featured in the film. She is speaking into the experiences of birthing on country and the challenges facing Indigenous families.   

Not in attendance.

Helen Guyupul is a Yolŋu Cultural Knowledge Teacher. She was part of the team supporting Caring for Mum on Country - a participatory action research project working in collaboration with Yolŋu (Aboriginal) women in North East Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. From this work, the Djäkamirr: caretaker of pregnancy and birth documentary was created.

Helen Guyupul is attending the conference with a special interest in discussing her work on the Djäkamirr: caretaker of pregnancy and birth documentary and the work featured in the film.