Professor
Michelle Tuckey

Keynote Topic: “Beyond Risk Mitigation: Cultivating Connection to Prevent Workplace Mistreatment”

Professor Tuckey’s research advances knowledge to prevent workplace mistreatment. Despite evidence that mistreatment is systemic, strategies often focus on changing awareness and responses to hostile behaviour at an individual level rather than addressing root causes.

Collaborating with diverse organisations across multiple industry sectors, Tuckey’s innovations have uncovered systemic risks and ways to tackle them, enabling workplaces to ‘design out’ hostile behaviour and informing an award-winning prevention program reaching nearly 10,000 employees across Australia.

She collaborates with industry partners to drive impact alongside contributions to the international scholarly literature, publishing 120 significant research outputs to date.

Tuckey’s work has influenced national policy, advising agencies such as Safe Work Australia, the Australian and Queensland Human Rights Commissions, and the Australian Medical Association.

She is frequently invited to speak nationally and internationally at academic and industry conferences and regularly engages with the media to shift perspectives on workplace mistreatment.

Professor Tuckey is an Associate Editor of the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology and serves on the Editorial Boards for Journal of Occupational Health Psychology and International Journal of Stress Management.

Professor
Michael Quinlan

Keynote Topic: “Psychosocial Hazards in Context: Underlying Causes and Effective Remedies”

Michael Quinlan PhD is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and emeritus professor of industrial relations at the University of New South Wales. His research focuses on how work organisation (including institutions and regulation) shape occupational health and safety (OHS) as well as the history of work.

In addition to publishing widely he has prepared government reports on OHS (including specialist reports on mining and road transport) for Australian and New Zealand governments and has also been involved in reports prepared for the European Union and World Health Organisation.

Professor
Yawen Cheng

Keynote Topic: “Psychosocial Consequences of Work-related Injuries and the Role of Workers’ Compensation System: Experiences of Migrant Workers in Taiwan”

Dr. Yawen Cheng is a Professor at the Institute of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University.

Her primary research interests include psychosocial work hazards, mental health risks in the workplace, and occupational safety and health protection policies. Dr. Cheng earned a doctoral degree in Epidemiology and completed post-doctoral research training in Health and Social Behaviors at the Harvard School of Public Health.

She has published over 110 peer-reviewed articles, several book chapters, and three books addressing occupational health issues in Taiwan. Dr. Cheng is a member of the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH) and the Taiwan Public Health Association, and she currently serves on the editorial board of the Annals of Work Exposures and Health.

In 2013, she co-founded a non-governmental organization – the Taiwan Occupational Safety and Health Link – and has been an active member ever since.

Dr Manal Azzi

Keynote Topic: “Promoting Safety and Health at Work in a Changing Climate”

Dr Manal Azzi is currently the Team Lead on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Policy at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland.

She manages a number of portfolios including the work on chemical safety and the environment and ILO’s activities on the prevention of communicable and non-communicable diseases, health promotion in the workplace including improved wellbeing, nutrition and the prevention of stress, psychosocial risks, violence and substance abuse.

She also coordinates the World Day for Safety and Health at Work campaign, in the context of which, she coordinated the ILO’s first report on climate change, heat stress and OSH in 2024.

With over 19 years in the organisation, Dr Azzi also works on advancing OSH management systems and promoting over 19 Conventions including ILO’s fundamental OSH Conventions 155 and 187 among others.

She played an instrumental role in the process leading to the recognition of OSH as a fundamental principle and right at work in June 2022.

Dr Azzi holds a PhD in Health Sciences and Policy (University of Surrey, UK), a masters in labour law, LLM (University of Leicester), a master’s in nutrition, and BSc. in environmental and public health sciences (American University of Beirut), and a degree in biochemistry, human physiology and health education (University of Sydney).

Professor
Frida Marina Fischer

Keynote Topic: “Challenges of Working time: Effects, Interventions and Policies”

Professor Frida Marina Fischer is a Full Professor in the Department of Environmental Health at the School of Public Health, University of São Paulo. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences, a Master’s and Doctorate in Public Health, and completed postdoctoral studies in Work Physiology and Ergonomics.

Professor Fischer has served as a board member of the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH) and as Chair of the Working Time Society/ICOH Scientific Committee on Shiftwork and Working Time. She currently serves as a board member of the Working Time Society.

She has extensive professional experience in Public Health, with a focus on Occupational Health.

Her work encompasses teaching, research and extension projects in public health, ergonomics, the organization of shift and night work, chronobiology, early functional aging, workplace injuries and work related diseases.

Additionally, she is a reviewer for national and international journals and serves as an evaluator for Brazilian funding agencies, and productivity grant holder from the CNPq research funding agency.

Dr Birgit Aust

Keynote Topic: “Psychosocial Work Environment Interventions to Protect and Improve Workers’ Health and Well-Being: What Have We Achieved and Where Do We Need to Go?”

Dr. Birgit Aust is a Senior Researcher at the National Research Centre for the Working Environment (NRCWE) in Copenhagen, Denmark.

She holds degrees in sociology and public health and has previously worked at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany and the University of California at Berkeley, USA.

Her primary research focus is on developing, implementing, and evaluating organizational-level workplace interventions aimed at improving the psychosocial work environment, preventing violence at work, and protecting and enhancing workers’ mental health.

Dr. Aust has widely disseminated her research findings and has presented at numerous international conferences, including invited presentations by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

In 2023, she published a systematic overview of systematic reviews identifying types of organizational-level interventions that can improve the work environment and the health of employees.

Also in 2023, she co-authored a widely recognized discussion paper in The Lancet about work-related causes of mental health conditions and interventions for their improvement in workplaces.

Dr. Aust is currently a Co-Investigator of the international research project PROSPERH funded by the European Union that aims to improve physical and mental health in workplaces through a multi-level online intervention, conducted in ten European countries and Australia.