Margaret Coady is a Senior Lecturer in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, and Program Manager of the Professional Ethics section of the A.R.C. Special Research Centre for Philosophy and Public Ethics. She has published widely in professional ethics and in children's and families' rights, has held Research Fellowships at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University, the Rockefeller Center at Bellagio, Italy, and the Kennedy Institute for Ethics at Georgetown University.

She has acted as a consultant on codes of ethics to a number of professional bodies including the the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry, the Australian Association of Social Workers, and the Victorian College of Optometry. She has been a member of the Psycho-surgery Review Board, and is a foundation member of the Victorian Government Child Death Review Committee. Specialised teaching and researching Current projects include a study of the rights and interests of would-be parents and potential children in new reproductive technology, and a study of Chinese and Western perpectives on regulating families.