Eliana Close

I am interested in the law and ethics of death and dying, and how law and regulation shape the way health professionals and individuals navigate decisions at the end of life. My work focuses on end-of-life law, policy, and practice, with particular emphasis on voluntary assisted dying and decision making in critical care. From 2020-2025, I led an in-depth case study on medical assistance in dying in Canada as part of an Australian Research Council funded international comparative project examining how law and policy are experienced by those receiving and providing assisted deaths. I am part of the team behind End of Life Law for Clinicians, a Commonwealth-funded program offering free end-of-life law training for clinicians. My research has been cited by parliaments and law reform commissions and has contributed an evidence base for voluntary assisted dying law reform and evaluation. I have also been involved in voluntary assisted dying implementation, contributing to the development of mandatory training for clinicians involved in voluntary assisted dying in Victoria, Western Australia, and Queensland.

I am Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Business and Law at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and a member of the End of Life Research and Education team at the Australian Centre for Health Law Research. I hold a Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours) in Psychology from the University of Calgary and an MA in Law from the University of Oxford, where I studied as a Rhodes Scholar. My PhD, on the regulation of disputes about potentially life-sustaining treatment, received QUT's Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award. Before joining QUT, I worked in business operations at Google and as a prosecutor with the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service, engaged in complex Charter of Rights litigation.