Professor Marc Shaw

2015 College Recipient, College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences

Professor Marc Shaw has made an outstanding contribution to tropical and geographical medicine in Australia and New Zealand, and also internationally through his research and workforce development. After working as a general practitioner in New Zealand for 15 years, he then became New Zealand’s first full-time travel medicine practitioner.

Currently, he is Medical Director of Worldwise Travellers' Health Centres in New Zealand, providing pre- and post-travel advice to travellers, while advising Australasian health professionals on current travel health information. He also leads and supports global expeditions of various types. He has been described as: “a passionate traveller, doctor, actor and observer of fine humour. But his favourite pastime remains as an expedition doctor. This has taken him to exotic places such as Namibia, Mongolia, Pitcairn Islands, and to the Amazon”.

As part of his JCU Doctorate in Public Health at JCU in 2009, Professor Shaw focused on four aspects of travel medicine: pre-travel medical advice; post-travel health disease; rabies vaccinations, schedules and management of those potentially exposed to rabies, and health requirements for expeditions to remote regions. This work comprised more than 20 published papers in respected journals.

Professor Shaw has had a primary teaching role for the last 12 years within the Discipline of Public Health and Tropical Medicine’s Travel Medicine program at James Cook University, including developing a course in Expedition and Wilderness Medicine, first offered at JCU in 2013. As an Adjunct Professor at JCU, Professor Shaw has consistently received feedback for being an inspirational lecturer whose subject matter focuses on work-integrated learning for travel and expedition medicine. Acting training from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London gives character to his entertaining lecturing style, rewarded in 2012 when he was elected as a Sessional Teacher of the Year.

He is the recipient of various national and international honours, including the New Zealand Special Service Medal (Service in Response to the Asian Tsunami) the NATO Medal (Humanitarian Service for the NZ Government in Afghanistan) the Educational Award of the Australasian College of Tropical Medicine, and the Inaugural ACTM Medal for Outstanding Service to Travel Medicine.

In 2009, Professor Shaw completed his Doctorate in Public Health at James Cook University.