Doreen Balabanoff is a Professor Emerita at OCAD University, where she taught and served as an administrator in the Faculty of Design for many years. She holds a Masters of Architecture (UCLA 1985) and a PhD in Architecture, (University College Dublin 2017). Her art and architectural seeks to engage with phenomenological spatial experience. Her practice-based PhD focused on reimagining the birth environment, with emphasis on the role of light (light-colour-darkness) in enhancement of birth experience and support for physiological birth. She has written several book chapters related to her doctoral work on birth environment design, is a co-founder of the Global Birth Environment Design Network (GBEDN) and leader of the SSHRC-funded Partnership project Transformational Change for Birth Environment Design, of which this conference is a culminating event.

Dr. Orli Dahan is Head of the Multidisciplinary Studies Department at Tel-Hai College in Israel and a philosopher of science specializing in consciousness and childbirth. She coined the term birthing consciousness to describe the hormonally and environmentally modulated altered state often experienced during physiological birth – an experience she links to neurophenomenological shifts such as hypofrontality, enabling deep immersion, pain transcendence, and an altered sense of time and self. Her research combines theoretical and empirical approaches, and she collaborates closely with psychologists, midwives, physicians, and gender studies scholars. Dahan’s current studies explore how physical and social birthing environments shape these altered states of consciousness, and how such experiences may influence postpartum well-being. Her work contributes to broader efforts to humanize childbirth and to bring interdisciplinary perspectives – philosophical, scientific, and feminist – into maternity care research and practice.

MAstudio (Alberto Esponda, Mayra Flores, and Marcial Romero) has a unique approach to architecture deeply influenced by its origins in carpentry, which allows them to integrate practical building knowledge into their architectural practice. They actively participate in construction alongside workers. Their design philosophy is rooted in the local context, guided by the spirit of the site or genius loci. They prioritise using local materials and collaboration with local artisans, creating architecture that is authentic, contextually appropriate, and reflective of the unique characteristics of the locale.  The Tarasana centre, designed to afford diverse community events and programming, provides the model of a community centre with family, maternal and infant health at its core. The voices and visions of architects are needed to consider how birth spaces might find form, materiality and connection to place as aspects of a paradigm shift for birth.

J. Davis Harte is Director and Faculty within the Design for Human Health Master’s program at Boston Architectural College. Dr. Harte is a WELL AP, and an educator, advocate, practitioner, and speaker who bridges trauma-informed spaces, children’s places, and birth environments with brain, neuroscientific, and environmental psychology knowledge. Davis holds a PhD in Health from the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, and a MSc in Design for Human Environments (Interiors focus) from Oregon State University. She co-leads the Global Birth Environment Design Network. 

Lateef Ademola Lawal is an architect, researcher, and university lecturer whose work focuses on the rapidly expanding field of healthcare architecture, particularly the birth environment. Lateef’s research navigates the boundaries between the biomedical hospital environment, humanised architecture, and wellbeing. His work addresses pressing challenges: transforming and optimising birth and postnatal environments in an era of birth medicalisation. Lateef is contributing his voice, along with other international networks of researchers and designers, to offer an enduring solution: creating better birth environment design and models, as well as inspiring postnatal spaces that not only consider birth as a healthy event but also support women’s needs and their emotional wellbeing throughout the birth phases. Lateef received his PhD from Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and previously worked with several architectural firms in Nigeria. His research interests include sensitive architecture for birth environments, biophilic design, and wellbeing. 

Growing up as a daughter of a midwife, Grace has been immersed in a lifelong conversation about birth. Reinforcing early beliefs in the environment’s active role in birth outcomes, she worked as part of the architect team alongside Maralyn Foureur on Singleton Hospital Birthing Suites, using an 'emotional design brief' developed by Foureur. Continuing this passion, Grace completed a Master of Architecture thesis at the University of Newcastle on birth environment design in Australia’s rural and regional contexts. Wambuul Birthplace was nominated for the AIA NSW Graduate Award, ARB NSW Medallion, and received the AIA NSW Architectural Communication Commendation and UoN Graduate of the Year Award. In 2024, she was awarded the Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship (NSW Architects Registration Board) to explore world-leading approaches to birth environment design. Today, Grace continues her research and advocacy for birth-centred design and is an active committee member of the Australian Health Design Council, supporting emerging voices in the future of health architecture.

Dr. Olcese is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University College of Medicine, and a leading authority on the neuroendocrine system and the circadian clock. His work is focused on the onset of labour, and the role melatonin receptors play in triggering and sustaining labour contractions. Dr. Olcese has received many Innovator Awards from FSU for his biomedical research, which has resulted in three patents. His current research focuses on the circadian timing of human parturition and novel strategies for mitigating preterm labor. In a second line of research, Dr. Olcese studies the mechanisms through which the brain hormone melatonin preserves cognitive function in a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The latter studies have led to early clinical trials on melatonin and sleep as neuroprotective tools to lower the risk and rate of progression of pre-dementia and AD. It is his strong belief that basic research should serve not only to advance our knowledge of the world, but to also provide the insights and technologies to help humanity live healthy and meaningful lives.

Deb Polzin-Rosenberg, RN, MArch, RA, AIA, Principal + Founder, Better Birth Design is a nurse and architect dedicated to improving the design of birthing spaces worldwide, and founder of Better Birth Design. She studied architecture at RISD, where she received a grant to compare birth facility design in the U.S., U.K., and the Netherlands. From 2015–2018, she worked with MASS Design Group, contributing her clinical perspective to global health design projects and research on how childbirth facility design impacts outcomes. Based in Rwanda from 2016–2018, she focused on maternity systems across Africa. Since moving to Botswana in 2022, she has partnered locally to improve maternal health infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa, conducting research supported by Ariadne Labs and the AIA’s LeBrun Travel Grant. As a 2024-2025 U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Botswana, she worked on developing evidence-based design guidelines for childbirth facilities in low-resource settings.

Nicoletta Setola is Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture University of Florence. She is a member of TESIS Centre “Systems and Technologies for Healthcare and Social Facilities” and the European Network of Architecture for Health (ENAH). Her research focuses on the topic of socio-healthcare building, particularly on birth environment, public spaces in hospitals, and primary care facilities. She is an expert in methodology and tools for spatial configuration analysis, related to how the flow of people in healthcare buildings can favour users’ rights. In 2018 she contributed as an expert to the drafting of the update of the European Midwifery Unit standards (2018), in the & Environment and Facilities section. She is working on the impact of maternity spaces on people‘s health and behaviors, with action research to support the NHS local Trusts in realizing new Birth Centres in Italy and with a maternity research project with the University of Notre Dame, USA,  in Kenya. She is co-founder of the Global Birth Environment Design Network (GBEDN).

Szyf is a retired professor of Pharmacology who held a Glaxo Smith Kline and James McGill Chair in Pharmacology at McGill University in Montreal Canada, He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Szyf has pioneered research in DNA methylation for the last four decades and published more than 330 papers on the biological role of DNA methylation that span a broad spectrum from basic mechanisms to cancer diagnostics and therapeutics, as well as behavior, chronic pain, and addiction. Szyf pioneered epigenetic pharmacology in cancer as well as in the field of behavioral epigenetics. Szyf studies provide a molecular link between environment and genes and between nurture and nature, and they have had a wide impact on the social sciences and psychiatry.