SPPC Annual Conference 2025 - Speaker Biographies
Toby Lowe
Toby has a PhD in Political Theory from Newcastle University, exploring “the Concept of Community in Political Theory”. He was Chief Executive of a participatory arts charity in North East England, supporting marginalised and excluded people to explore and address their creativity.
He has also done policy work addressing poverty in neighbourhoods for the Social Exclusion Unit, and worked as a public management action researcher – helping public service organisations across the world to change their approach to management by using a Human Learning Systems approach.
He is passionate about helping to change how public service is managed, as he believes that how we perform in public management is directly connected to governments’ ability to address the complex challenges faced by people.
Jo Bowden
Jo has been a Consultant in Palliative Medicine in Fife since 2013, working in a Health and Social Care Partnership-funded, integrated service across all care and residential settings.
She is also a researcher, supporting clinical trials and mixed-methods studies aimed at improving the quality and reliability of palliative care for all who need it – in Fife and beyond.
Jo and her colleagues in Fife and Lothian have been working to better understand and to improve the reality of ‘best supportive care’ since 2015, with a programme of palliative cancer care service developments and research in this important area.
Donald Macaskill
Donald has worked for many years in the health and social care sectors across the United Kingdom. A particular professional focus has been issues related to dementia, bereavement, palliative care and individual human rights. He is the current Chair of the Bereavement Charter Group for Scotland and a former UK Bereavement Commissioner.
He is the CEO of Scottish Care, the representative body for care providers in the independent sector in Scotland, namely private, charitable, and employee-owned care organisations which includes care home and home care organisations.
He serves on several Scottish, UK and international charities and boards related to health and social care including at present as a Director of the Global Ageing Network. A weekly blogger, podcaster and public speaker he is an active campaigner for older person rights.
Cormac Russell
Cormac is a social explorer, an author and a much sought-after speaker. He is the Founding Director of Nurture Development and a member of the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute, at DePaul University, Chicago.
Over the last 25 years, Cormac’s work has demonstrated an enduring impact in 35 countries around the world. He has trained communities, agencies, NGOs and governments in ABCD and other community-based approaches in Africa, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe and North America.
His most recent books are The Connected Community- Discovering the Health, Wealth, and Power of Neighborhoods (Coauthor John McKnight); Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2022, and Rekindling Democracy – A Professional’s Guide to Working in Citizen Space; Cascade Books, 2020.
Clare McGowan
Dr Clare McGowan is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist working at the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre and the National Haematopoetic Stem Cell Transplant Service at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
Dr McGowan has over 20 years experience in the field and has worked in a variety of healthcare settings, including a Hospital Palliative Care Team. She also sits on the Specialist Practitioners Group for the Scottish Partnership in Palliative Care. Dr McGowan has particular clinical interest in the use of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy for people with cancer. Dr McGowan has undertaken research looking at the utility of holistic needs assessment in the care of people with cancer, the role of values in treatment refusal and the impact of caring for patients at end of life from a staff perspective. In her spare time she enjoys exploring the wild beauty of Scotland.
Stephen Fenning
Stephen Fenning is a Consultant in Palliative Medicine in NHS Fife, working across all care and residential settings. He has been actively involved in undergraduate and postgraduate medical education for many years and he is currently an Associate Director of Medical Education in Fife.
In 2018-19, Stephen worked in the Office of the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) in Scottish Government, including acting as Editor-in-Chief of the CMO’s Annual Report 2017-18 ‘Personalising Realistic Medicine‘. Through this experience, he developed a strong professional interest in embedding the principles of Realistic Medicine in clinical care and, in recent years, working alongside colleagues in Fife and Lothian, he has supported research to understand the experiences of people with advanced illness and what high value care looks like to them.
Ariel Dempsey
Dr. Ariel Dempsey is a physician and scholar with a deep interest in how we navigate uncertainty in medicine, especially at the end of life. She is a postdoctoral fellow in Health and Christian Ethics in the University of Oxford Faculty of Theology and Religion. She earned her MD from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and DPhil in Science & Religion from the University of Oxford. Her doctoral research developed the concept of Palliating Uncertainty—an approach grounded in the values of palliative care and shaped by the philosophy of pragmatism. Dr. Dempsey is also a member of the team that received the Oxford Vice-Chancellor’s Award in Teaching for the development of a Medical Humanities Curriculum at the Oxford Medical School. After postdoctoral work, she will pursue residency in psychiatry with a fellowship in palliative care.
Chris Harkin
Chris is a Public Health Programme Manager at the Glasgow Centre for Population Health and has degrees in Medical Science, Social Science, and Business and Technology. Chris has previous experience working for Glasgow City Council, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and the University of Glasgow. Chris lectures at Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of Glasgow, where he is also an Honorary Researcher.
He has significant experience in evaluating the impacts of community or area-based interventions. Chris has led the internationally recognised GCPH evaluation of the arts-based programme Sistema Scotland, for over ten years. He has led a range of work examining how the economy shapes public health and has published work relating to the population health impacts of in-work poverty, payday loans and unsecured debt. In 2023 he published work examining the impacts of the cost-of-living crisis on the lives, health and wellbeing of disabled people in Glasgow City.
During the pandemic he developed a range of evidence briefings design to inform Glasgow City Council’s Social Recovery Taskforce. Chris maintains a clear equality focus, he has recently published work examining the unmet public health needs of the LGBT+ community. With a background in technology, Chris approaches public health through a forward-thinking lens, in 2025 he published a discussion paper on the role of AI in driving whole-system change across health and care.
Final speaker to follow soon....
