(Professor Lindy Willmott, Dr Madeleine Archer and Professor Ben White)
Dr Madeleine Archer has officially earned her PhD from QUT. Her thesis, undertaken in the End-of Life program in the Australian Centre for Health Law Research, was supervised by an interdisciplinary and international supervisory team: School of Law Professors Ben White and Lindy Willmott, and Professor Luc Deliens and Professor Kenneth Chambaere (End of Life Care Research Group, VUB and Ghent University, Belgium).
Dr Archer’s thesis is a PhD by publication including five peer-reviewed journal articles and a book chapter in an edited book. Entitled “Examining How Regulation Shapes Euthanasia Practice in Belgium: A Qualitative Study of the Literature and Health Professionals’ Perspectives”, the thesis explores how Belgium’s voluntary assisted dying regulatory frameworks shapes practice. Her research applied regulatory theory to identify how fragmentated voluntary assisted dying governance can affect health professionals’ decision-making, care quality, and the effectiveness of assisted dying oversight. This new knowledge is useful both for improving both Belgium’s assisted dying law and assisted dying laws being considered or updated in other international jurisdictions. Madeleine’s thesis received a nomination from one of her examiners for an Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award.
The full text of Madeleine’s thesis is available online.
ACHLR congratulates Dr Madeleine Archer on this important milestone, and we look forward to seeing her ongoing research contributions.
About Madeleine Archer
Since completing her PhD studies, Dr Archer has been working as a postdoctoral research fellow in ACHLR and co-lead of ACHLR’s End of Life program. Madeleine has recently commenced work as a Chief Investigator on a new project funded by the J. O. & J. R. Wicking Trust as managed by Equity Trustees. This project aims to develop accessible education resources for older Australians to navigate new and existing information about their end-of-life choices. Along with Professor Ben White she is also co-chairing an international conference: International Conference on Assisted Dying and Other End of Life Care held in Brisbane in 2026.