Baroness Finlay of Llandaff is an internationally renowned expert in palliative medicine and an independent cross-bench member of the House of Lords. 

Ilora Finlay is Professor of Palliative Medicine at Cardiff University. She was the first consultant in Palliative Medicine in Wales in 1987, set up the hospice there and has developed palliative and hospice services across Wales. She has worked with Marie Curie Cancer Care since 1987 and is now a National Vice President. As Chair of trustees, she recently took the National Council for Palliative Care through merger with Hospice UK and is leading the national conversation on Death and Dying through Dying Matters.

Baroness Finlay has been President of the Medical Women’s Federation, President of the British Medical Association, President of the Royal Society of Medicine and is President of the Chartered Society for Physiotherapy.

She also chaired the Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland and established its ethics committee during her three-year tenure, served on the BMA ethics committee for many years and now holds the UK branch UNESCO chair in bioethics.

Luc Deliens is Professor of Palliative Care Research and Director of the multidisciplinary and interuniversity End-of-Life Care Research Group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) & Ghent University in Belgium.

Internationally, he co-chairs the European Association for Palliative Care Research Network, and coordinates or is involved in different on-going EU funded research projects. He successfully supervised 37 PhDs, incl. on palliative care in dementia, and is actually supervising about 20 PhD students.

He published over 450 papers in peer-reviewed journals, authored, co-authored or edited 16 books and published over 50 book chapters. He received several scientific awards and is member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium.

Prof Ritchie is currently Professor of the Psychiatry of Ageing at the University of Edinburgh.

He is a leading authority on Clinical Trials in Dementia and has been senior investigator on over 30 drug trials of both disease modifying and symptomatic agents for that condition. This emerged from his ongoing clinical leadership of the MPAC (Metal Protein Attenuating Compound) pipeline for Prana Biotechnology dating back to 1998 when he worked as a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Mental Health Research Institute in Victoria, Australia.

He has sat on advisory boards of numerous pharmaceutical companies, biotechs and clinical research organizations with an in interest in developing drugs and trials infrastructure for Alzheimer’s disease.

He has published extensively on the topics of dementia and delirium including clinical trials and meta-analyses. He sits on several advisory boards for major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies as well as The Wellcome Trust and the Public Health Steering Group for the Alzheimer’s Society. He is also one of the leading editors in the Cochrane Collaboration’s Dementia Group with a particular specialism in Diagnostic Test Accuracy reviews and is Assistant Editor for the journal International Psychogeriatrics.

Professor in Practical Theology and Pastoral Care in the School of Divinity, Religious Studies and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen.

Professor Swinton has a background in mental health nursing and healthcare chaplaincy and has researched and published extensively within the areas of ageing, dementia, mental health and illness, and spirituality and human well-being and the theology and spirituality of disability. 

He’s the Director of Aberdeen University’s Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability and Co-Director of the University’s Kairos Forum.

He’s an honorary Professor of Nursing at the University’s Centre for Advanced Studies in Nursing and has authored publications including: Dementia: Living in the Memories of God.