Caroline de Costa, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at James Cook University’s College of Medicine and Dentistry in Cairns from 2004 to 2021, is now an adjunct professor of The Cairns Institute at the Smithfield Campus of JCU, where she supervises postgraduate students and conducts research in the area of women’s reproductive health, with numerous recent publications in peer-reviewed journals. She is also an author of fiction, with seven novels published since 2015.