Michelle Lazarus

Associate Professor Michelle Lazarus serves as the Director of the Monash Centre for Human Anatomy Education (CHAE) and Deputy Head of Department (Education) for Anatomy & Developmental Biology within the Biomedical Discovery Institute.  Additionally, she is the Curriculum Integration Network lead within the Monash Centre Scholarship in Health Education (MCSHE) as well as a Monash Education Academy Fellow, anatomy education discipline lead within the medical curriculum, and a core member of the General Surgical Science Examination Board for Royal Australian College of Surgeons. 

In addition to her leadership roles, she is passionate about evidence-based education.  Her research group explores ways of improving basic science teaching to enhance students’ professional identity and role development, as well as knowledge competency.  Her work focuses on integration of psychosocial skills (medical ethics, professionalism, uncertainty tolerance and clinical skills) within core coursework.

Her recent work explores the role of uncertainty within healthcare science education, challenging A/Prof’s Lazarus’s own tolerance of uncertainty (an academic irony).  Within her active and dynamic research group, she supervises multiple higher degree students and honours students. Michelle is an award winning educator and teaches extensively into the medical anatomy program.  In addition to her teaching awards, she is the recipient of multiple education research grants and travel grants, and runs workshops to help other academics starting their education research pathways. Her research approach is collaborative and team-based, with many of her research funding coming through partnerships both locally and internationally.

In addition to her research and teaching endeavours, she develops innovative curricula and empowers others to do the same. An example of her curricular innovations include her curated monthly science literacy podcast accessible through www.AskAnatomist.com which focuses on the anatomy underpinning medically interesting topics through a multi-disciplinary lens, as well as internationally renowned and utilized medical imaging tutorials. A/Prof. Lazarus is passionate about all things education, and works to inspire others. She is well known for asking questions, and she values exploring others' queries in both teaching and research.

• Anatomy Education
• Higher Eduation
• Qualitative Methods
• Healthcare Education
• Mixed Methods
• Uncertainty Tolerance
• Professional Identity

• Undergraduate Medical Anatomy
• Developmental Biology
• Biomedical Sciences