Introducing Professor David Dewhurst – JMICAWE Professorial fellow for animal alternatives in teaching.

As Professor of e-Learning and Director of Educational Information Services in the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, David was appointed as the Jeanne Marchig Professorial Fellow of Replacement Alternatives in Higher Education in 2010.  Although extremely busy with his University wide role in developing e –learning capability, David is frequently invited to present at international conferences describing the research work he and his colleagues have carried out on the approaches to and the measurement of the impact of the use of alternatives to animals for teaching medical undergraduates.  As a member of the governing council for the Mahatma Gandhi-Doerenkamp Center for Alternatives to Use of Animals in Life Science Education, based in Tamil Nadu, India, he has been involved in promoting the use of alternatives to animal use in teaching and research. Recently, he was one of two main speakers at a series of workshops held within a number of Indian Medical Schools. The other main speaker being Dr John Pavlowski from Harvard Medical School who talked about human patient simulation. David recent paper entitled ‘ Is animal free teaching in the life sciences better teaching?’ will shortly be published in Alternatives to Animal Experimentation (ALTEX) 29, Special Issue 2912 Proceedings of WC8 pp3-6 (in press).