THE OSLO TRANS HEALTH CONFERENCE 9.-10. OKTOBER 2025

Cisgender woman and transfeminist. PhD in Gynecology and Obstetrics and Master's degree in Human Sexuality. For over 25 years, she led public services for sexual and reproductive health in Barcelona. In 2012, in collaboration with the transgender community of Barcelona, actively engaged in the global "Stop Pathologization" movement, created a transgender healthcare service, named Trànsit within the public health system. In 2016, thanks to the tireless advocacy of the Transforma la Salut platform, which brought together numerous trans* and LGTBIQA+ organizations, the Catalan Department of Health adopted a new model of care: decentralized, trans-affirmative, community-based, and grounded in informed consent. Ashoka Fellow since 2019 for driving systemic change in transgender health care. Recipient of multiple awards from trans*, LGTBIQA+ organizations, and public institutions. Currently president of Kasa Trans* Association (kasatrans20@gmail.com)

Ayden Scheim is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology in the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University (Philadelphia, USA). He holds visiting and adjunct appointments at the University of California-San Francisco, Western University (Canada), and Unity Health Toronto. His research takes an intersectional approach to understanding and addressing the health impacts of inequitable social, policy, and healthcare environments. Dr. Scheim has been conducting community-engaged with trans communities for almost two decades. Most recently, he led national community-based participatory research surveys in Canada and India funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the US National Institutes of Health. Dr. Scheim was a co-author of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care, Version 8 (Sexual Health chapter), conducted systematic reviews for the forthcoming World Health Organization trans health guideline, and sits on the Institute Advisory Board for the CIHR Institute of Gender and Health. He is also Board Secretary of Global Action for Trans Equality. 

Stephen M. Rosenthal, MD, is Professor of Pediatrics at University of California San Francisco (UCSF). He received his undergraduate degree from Yale and his medical degree from Columbia, where he completed his residency in pediatrics. He subsequently completed his postdoctoral fellowship in pediatric endocrinology at UCSF and joined the UCSF faculty in 1983. Dr. Rosenthal has served as Program Director for Pediatric Endocrinology and Director of the Pediatric Endocrine Clinics, and currently serves as co-founder and Emeritus Medical Director of the multidisciplinary UCSF Child and Adolescent Gender Center. He has been an NIH-funded Principal Investigator on studies focused on optimizing care of transgender/gender diverse youth and is coauthor of the Endocrine Society’s Clinical Practice Guideline for transgender persons and co-author of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)’s Standards of Care, Version 8. Dr. Rosenthal has served as President of the Pediatric Endocrine Society and as Vice President and member of the Board of Directors of the Endocrine Society. He is currently a member of the WPATH Board of Directors.

Dr. Rosenthal’s principal non-work passion is figure skating. He has participated in various adult national and international competitions, most recently in Paris, August, 2018.

Ketil Slagstad is a physician-historian and postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine at Charité Berlin. His research focuses on the production, negotiation, and contestation of medical knowledge between medical experts, patients, and activists in the history of trans medicine and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He is particularly interested in the role of bureaucracy in regulating medical practices, but also in how the welfare state context has shaped thought styles and practice in social medicine. His first book, Det ligger i blodet (Press, 2023), about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Norway, based on archive material and interviews, was awarded the Norwegian Critics' Prize for Best Non-Fiction 2023 and the Book Trade's Non-Fiction Prize 2023. His second book, Standardizing Sex, a history of trans medicine that uses Scandinavian sources to tell a global story, will be published by The University of Chicago Press in September 2025. The book traces the recurring attempts to regulate and standardize sex and sheds light on a set of relations and problems that continue to impact discussions of trans medicine and trans rights around the world. Currently, he is the PI of the research project Tools of Clinical Knowledge, a praxeographic analysis of clinical research and biological psychiatry in the 20th century. Slagstad has published his research in both history of science and medical journals (including Isis, Social History of Medicine, and New England Journal of Medicine). 

Simona Giordano is Professor of Bioethics at the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy (CSEP) at the University of Manchester. She has been working on gender medicine for over twenty years. Her latest book is Children and Gender: Ethical Issues in Clinical Management of Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth, from Early Years to Late Adolescence, 2023, Oxford: Oxford University Press. For more information, visit https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/simona.giordano

Lene Løvdal is a human rights lawyer specialising in anti-discrimination issues. She is currently the manager at www.egalia.org as well as a member of the European Equality Law Network and European Disability Expertise, reporting to the European commission on developments in Norwegian equality law and policies.

She has written a commentary on the Norwegian Gender Recognition Act for Karnov, and the report “Health care for minors with gender incongruence. Legal and medical perspectives” together with dr.med at Harvard Medical School, Ole-Petter Hamnvik, among other reports and academic writing.

Dr. Hamnvik is a native of Norway who received his medical degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He completed training in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston, USA. Dr. Hamnvik is currently a clinician-educator at BWH and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Hamnvik’s clinical practice is focused on providing gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT). He co-lead the efforts that lead to the establishment of the BWH Center for Transgender Health, now an internationally recognized multidisciplinary center that provides all aspects of gender-affirming care. Dr. Hamnvik also provides clinical guidance and provides patient care for patients seeking GAHT at the Oslo Municipal Health Center for Gender and Sexuality. Dr. Hamnvik has received national and international recognition for his clinical expertise in the area of transgender health, and is currently serving on the Endocrine Society’s committee to update their gender-affirming hormone guidelines.

Dr. Hamnvik serves as the Director of Education for the BWH Center for Transgender Health, leading the center's efforts to use education to reduce health disparities and improve access to care for transgender people. He is also on the steering committee for the Global Education Institute of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), leading WPATH’s education efforts.

Dr Cal Horton is a trans and non-binary researcher from the UK. They focus on the rights of trans children, access to healthcare, inclusive education and supportive families. They are interested in depathologisation, tackling healthcare and institutional violence, and building accountability to trans children. Their work considers the operation of forces of prejudice, power, control and cis-supremacy, keeping trans children in situations of reinforced inequality.

Anniken Sørlie is an Associate Professor of Law at the Department of Social Work at Oslo Metropolitan University. She holds a PhD in Law from the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo (2018), and earned her Cand.jur. degree in 2012. She was awarded H.M. The King's Gold Medal in 2019.

Previously, she has worked as an Associate Professor at Østfold University College, Senior Advisor at the Norwegian National Human Rights Institution (NIM), and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Public and International Law, University of Oslo.

She has published extensively on the legal status of LGBTQ+ individuals in Norway. She was co-editor of the anthology Freedom, Equality and Diversity: Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation in Legal, Medical and Social Science Perspectives (Gyldendal, 2021), and has authored the book chapter “Queer Elderly: How Far Does the Right to Live Openly Extend in Elder Care?” (2022) and the article “Trans reproduction: continuity, cis-normativity and trans inequality in law” (2023).

Kristopher is a kindergarten pedagogist with a Master’s in Early Childhood Education and Care, and a dedicated trans activist. He is likely the first trans man in Norway to have undergone forced sterilization before 2016 and later given birth, after a long fight to keep his uterus. He has since advocated for fully depathologized health care and a formal apology from the National Hospital and the State.

A documentary about his life and family, Tre fedre (Fatherhood), is currently in pre-premiere and will be released in Norway on September 5th, followed by an international release. In the film, Kristopher shares the trauma he experienced at the National Hospital, including being forced to undergo sterilization to meet preconceived binary notions of gender.

He recently co-authored an article warning against moral panic over rising referrals to gender identity services, emphasizing that such responses are unjustified — regardless of whether increases are real or perceived (preprint).

Aleksander Sørlie is a nurse and subject matter expert with many years experience working with gender and sexuality, both as a health care professional and through peer support and patient advocacy. Aleksander helped found the Norwegian Patient Organization for Gender Incongruence and has long experience working with transgender health and policy in Norway.

Ole Martin Moen (b. 1985) is Professor of Ethics in the Health Sciences at Oslo Metropolitan University. He has a PhD in philosophy and works mainly on issues in practical ethics. His research has been published in, among other venues, 'Journal of Ethics', 'Journal of Medical Ethics', 'Bioethics', 'Neuroethics' and 'Philosophical Studies'. Professor Moen is a frequent participant in bioethical debates in Norwegian media outlets.

Isak Løberg Jacobsen is a Ph.D.-Candidate at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, NTNU. His doctoral project, “(Un)reproductive bodies? Transmasculinity and reproductive choices in Norway” (2023-2027). His works centers the experiences of transmasculine individuals in making reproductive choices, with specific attention to how reproductive autonomy is negotiated against cisnormative societal structures, legal frameworks and welfare institutions in Norway.