This workshop presents the collaborative design of a National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and Medical Research Ethics Committee (NAHREC), a bold step toward transforming the ethical oversight of national and cross-jurisdictional research involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. NAHREC will be a national, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled committee providing rigorous, culturally legitimate ethical review in alignment with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander values, priorities and governance principles. 

 Participants will be introduced to the governance model co-developed by the Lowitja Institute and national stakeholders, and the ways in which NAHREC will interface with existing Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs) to reduce duplication, improve culturally safety practices, and streamline ethical review processes. The workshop will also present the methodology underpinning national consultation, mapping of current processes, and development of nationally endorsed ethical research principles. 

 Interactive components will support participants to reflect on how their institutions can engage with and support this evolving ethical infrastructure. Case studies will demonstrate current challenges in cross-jurisdictional ethics review and how NAHREC provides a pathway to culturally safe, efficient, and inclusive research governance. 

The session invites researchers, ethics committee members, administrators and policy leaders to critically engage with the implications of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander -led ethics reform for research integrity and community trust. This work reflects a decisive shift from consultation to governance in research ethics and provides a practical blueprint for embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices in national research systems.

This interactive workshop will build skills in conducting fair and robust research integrity investigations. Participants will explore key elements of procedural fairness, investigation planning, interviewing, and report writing through short presentations and a series of hands-on group activities. We will show you how to directly apply learnings into practice ,including how to run successful integrity interviews, write investigation reports, and structured case discussions. Suitable for staff involved in research integrity at universities, hospitals, and research institutes, the workshop offers practical tools and strategies to support defensible, transparent, and well-structured investigations

With a global ageing population, more people are living with cognitive impairment. Yet it can be ethically challenging to include this population in research. Proxy decision makers are asked to make a participation decision based on the person’s wishes, yet preferences about research are often unknown. Advance research planning is a process for enabling people who anticipate incapacity to express and document their research preferences and to nominate and prepare proxies. Such planning is endorsed in various research ethics guidelines, including the 2025 release of Australia’s National Statement, which calls on researchers and reviewers to consider using advance research planning and research directives. Previous research has found widespread international support for introducing advance research planning, but identified ethical, legal and practical challenges that researchers and research ethics committees will need to navigate. 

In this workshop, the facilitators will present key findings from their recent scoping review on public and professionals’ perceptions and experiences of advance research planning. This will form the basis for three interactive discussions: 

1: What are the key ethical considerations for supporting people to express and document their preferences about future research participation? 

2: How should these previously expressed preferences inform (or direct) participation decisions during periods of impaired capacity? 

3: What is the role of research ethics committees when reviewing studies involving advance research planning, and what are their information and support needs? 

Audience participation strategies will include live polling to identify and/or rank challenges and strategies, structured small group brainstorming activities, and rapid-fire reports.