Kristina Orfali

Kristina Orfali is an associate clinical professor of bioethics in pediatrics at Columbia University and a faculty associate at the Center for Bioethics and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP). A member of the Morgan-Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York–Presbyterian, she is currently involved in ethics consults and is the co-director of the new elective “Bioethics and Pediatrics” at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

She has published work analyzing, from a cross cultural perspective, patient’s hospital experiences, clinician and family end-of life decision making in intensive care units and the professionalization of clinical ethics. Her more recent interdisciplinary research focuses on ethical dilemmas, uncertainty and international variations in medical prognosis in neonatology, a particular emphasis being put on the links between decision theory and empirical results. Another line of recent publication with colleagues from behavioural sciences, relates to the negative psychological consequences of choice in life and death contexts. She is the co-editor (with R. DeVries, L. Turner and C. Bosk) of The View from Here, Bioethics and Social Sciences.

Orfali has been an assistant professor in medicine and assistant director at the MacLean Center for Clinical Ethics at the University of Chicago and directeur de recherches at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France.

Orfali is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and received her Ph.D. from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in France.