Conveners:
Michael J. Madison, JD
John E. Murray Faculty Scholar, Professor of Law
Professor Madison focuses on institutions for producing, storing, and distributing knowledge. The scope of his writing includes information, data, creativity, innovation, and art; it ranges from the development of research universities to patent history, from the law of fair use and production of conceptual art to legal rules governing data, network security, and computer software. He is the author of more than 60 journal articles and book chapters. He is a Senior Scholar with the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security (Pitt Cyber). He is the co-founder of the global research network titled the Workshop on Governing Knowledge Commons and the global law reform platform titled Future Law Works. He is a general editor of the “Studies in Governing Knowledge Commons” book series at Cambridge University Press. He is an Affiliate Researcher with the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University, with the EDHEC Business School Augmented Law Institute in Lille, France, and with the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh. He holds a secondary appointment as Professor in the University of Pittsburgh Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). At Pitt Law, he is Faculty Director of the Future Law Project and a John E. Murray Faculty Scholar.
He has been a social media creator and publisher for nearly 20 years, most recently as the co-founder and co-host of The Future Law Podcast and Your Leadership Podcast. He has been a pioneer in teaching leadership to law students and lawyers.
Professor Madison’s awards and distinctions include the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award and Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award at Pitt, a fellowship from the Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers project at the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) in Denver, and election to membership in the American Law Institute in 2016. In 2014, he was awarded the Yale Medal by Yale University. Before becoming a law professor in 1997, he practiced law for nearly 10 years in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
Lisa S. Parker, PhD
Dickie, McCamey & Chilcote Professor of Bioethics
Professor of Human Genetics, School of Public Health
Director, Center for Research Ethics
Director, Master of Arts in Bioethics Program and Graduate Certificate in Bioethics
Lisa Parker directs the University’s Master of Arts in Bioethics Program and the Graduate Certificate in Bioethics in The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, and is a co-director of the Medical Humanities & Ethics Stream in the School of Medicine. She is also a faculty member in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program, an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Religious Studies, and a fellow of the Center for Philosophy of Science. For the Office of Research, she leads the University’s Research, Ethics and Society Initiative, designed to foster campus-wide discussion of research ethics and the social implications of empirical research, scholarship, and technology development. From 2016-2025, she served as Director of the University's Center for Bioethics & Health Law. Dr. Parker has published extensively on ethical concerns related to the design and conduct of research, particularly genetic and mental health research, including informed consent and privacy protection. Her research on ethical issues in genetics/genomics has focused on the ethical management of incidental findings and return of research results, pharmacogenomic research, genetic enhancement, and precision medicine. She has a sustained interest in employing feminist approaches to bioethical issues and in the critical analysis of bioethics as a social practice and field of inquiry. Since 2016, her research has turned to issues in neural engineering, responsible use of data, and the use of AI and Generative AI.
Dr. Parker collaborates with investigators across the University, as well as nationally, on both empirical studies and theoretical and policy analyses, including national working groups on public health genomics and the gene therapy ecosystem. Current projects with Pitt colleagues include ethical issues related to research on artificial intelligence, incidental findings in stem cell transplant donors, maternal and child health, enrolling healthcare workers as subjects of research, and neural engineering research.
After completing her second term on the Genomics and Society Working Group of the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research for the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), Dr. Parker continues to serve on the Expert Scientific Panel of the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network. She is currently a reviewer for the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation, and a past member of the study section of the NHGRI ELSI Program (the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Program).
Dr. Parker co-chaired the Ad Hoc Committee on Generative AI in Research and Education, co-chairs the Institutional Conflict of Interest Committee, and serves on the Humanities Council and committees on data governance, dual use of research of concern, human cadaveric material, institutional data review, responsible data science, and women in medicine and science. She was recently elected to a second term on the University’s Faculty Assembly (2022-2025) and serves on the Budget Policies Committee.
Bridget E. Keown, PhD
Associate Teaching Professor, Gender Sexuality & Women’s Studies
Programming Director, Research Ethics & Society Initiative
Bridget Keown leads the Gender & Science Initiative in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program. She is affiliated faculty in Health Humanities with the Institute for Bioethics and the Department of English, and has also taught in the Department of History and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature. She was named one of two winners of the 2024 Tina and David Bellet Teaching Excellence Award.
For the Office of Research, she is the Programming Director for the University’s Research, Ethics and Society Initiative, designed to foster campus-wide discussion of research ethics and the social implications of empirical research, scholarship, and technology development. She is also a member of the University of Pittsburgh’s Horror Center, where she founded and organizes the virtual Queer Horror Conference. She serves on the Provost’s Advisory Council on Instructional Excellence, and Pitt's University Faculty Senate, where she was recently re-elected to her second term as the co-chair of the Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Discrimination Advocacy Committee.
Dr. Keown’s research focuses on the construction of knowledge and narrative. Her primary research focuses Irish and British' women’s experience of trauma as the result of the First World War, and how their interactions with physicians contributed to descriptions of “shell shock” in their own time, and how gender continues to shape diagnoses and treatment of PTSD and related trauma conditions. Additionally, she is currently working on a project that considers the intersection of technology and identity in the archives. She has also contributed several articles and chapters on the history of kinship and theory among queer Irish and Irish-American communities during the early years of the AIDS Epidemic.
Outside of Pitt, Bridget is the co-organizer of the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference at Stokercon, the annual meeting of the Horror Writers of America, and the founder and organizer of the virtual Rethinking War Conference. She serves on the Executive Council of the American Conference for Irish Studies and Editorial Board of the Close Encounters in War Journal.