Our board

Dr Eugen Koh

Dr Eugen Koh first joined the Cunningham Dax Collection in 1999 as Senior Lecturer in Art in Psychiatry, a secondment from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne. He continues to hold this position while assuming the position as the director upon the retirement of Dr Eric Cunningham Dax in 2002. He is a consultant psychiatrist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice and also works part time at St Vincent's Hospital. At St Vincent's, he chairs the Art in Mental Health Working Group which explores ways of using creative arts in a modern mental health service. Eugen has also maintained an art practice (painting) over the past 25 years.

Elizabeth Dax

Elizabeth M. Dax AM; MD,BS; PhD has had a career in medicine and science. She was Director of the National Reference Laboratory, Australia (NRL) until recently and also Director of a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for 20 years from 1990. While she is Chairman of the Dax Centre Board (2010-) she is also Chair of St Hilda's College Council, University of Melbourne and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee, HealthLinx Ltd. She conducts consultancies on the quality management of lab9ratories particularly in developing countries. She has worked with numbers of international organizations and international governments. She has 100 peer reviewed publications and has authored 2 books. She was awarded an Membership of the Order of Australia in 2001.

Bob Matches

Bob Matches is South Australian by birth and was educated at Prince Alfred College and Adelaide University. He qualified as an accountant and is an FCPA.

He has held management positions in two banks, in commerce and in the not-for-profit sector. The latter part of his career was spent in public practice in Melbourne as an accountant, tax agent and management consultant. He has also taught extensively to professional and undergraduate groups.

He has now retired from practice and lives in Geelong.

Sandra Hacker

Sandra is a psychiatrist in private practice, and liaison psychiatrist at the Alfred Heart-Lung Transplant Unit. Her clinical interest is severe trauma, undertaking long-term psychotherapy with adult victims of severe childhood sexual assault. Her medico-legal interests are in Crimes Compensation, Workcover and medical negligence.

Sandra chairs the Board of the Mental Health Research Institute, and is Chair of the Australian Health Ethics Committee of the National Health & Medical Research Council and past Chair of the Cunningham Dax collection of Psychiatric Art advisory committee. Formerly she chaired the Board of the Northern Metropolitan Health Service and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and was AMA Victoria president and AMA federal vice president.

Sandra was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2005 for services to the medical profession.

Lei Ning

Deputy Director of the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council and manages the Consumer Research and Evaluation Unit. As an active consumer representative, Lei sits on a number of national and state mental health committees and boards.

Lei worked as a professional artist for more than 15 years, has a master's degree in art therapy, and is interested in the relationship between creativity and mental health.

John Lesser

John was appointed as a Victorian Magistrate in 2010. He sits at the Melbourne Court, primarily in crime. He is also the supervising magistrate of the Assessment and Referral Court (ARC) List, a newly constituted list dealing with offenders with mental health and cognitive impairment issues affecting their offending behaviour and using a solution-focused model. The ARC List commenced in April 2010, operating as a 3-year pilot program, which will be comprehensively evaluated.

John was the President of the Mental Health Review Board of Victoria from 2000 to 2010, having been a sessional Legal Member since 1993. Prior to this, John was a member of a number of Victorian and Commonwealth tribunals. He also ran a part-time general legal practice from 1980 to 1997. The main areas of practice included conveyance, wills and probate, and business and commercial matters.

Caroline Hogg

Caroline Hogg taught for many years in the state secondary system, and was elected as a Labor member of Parliament from 1982 until 1999. During that time she held many Victorian Government human services portfolios. She maintains a special interest in public health and mental health.

Since 2000, she has been associated with a number of public sector committees.

Sidney Bloch

A medical graduate of the University of Cape Town, Sidney Bloch trained in psychiatry at the University of Melbourne. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP). He is currently Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Adjunct Emeritus Professor in the Centre for Health and Society, and Senior Fellow, School of Philosophy, Anthropology and Social Inquiry at the University of Melbourne; and Honorary Senior Psychiatrist at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne.

The author of 13 books, Sidney was awarded a citation by the RANZCP in 2004 for his academic contribution to psychiatry. He was chief editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry for 13 years, the longest tenure in the history of the Journal; and prior to that, Associate Editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry for 10 years.