Personal statement
I am currently Senior Lecturer and Director of Teaching and Learning in the Law School, and have been at Strathclyde since 2006. I currently teach and co-ordinate two Honours classes - Law, Persons and Property (Honours) and Issues in Healthcare Law and Ethics (Honours). I obtained my LLB (Honours) and LLM (by research) from the University of Glasgow, before being awarded my PhD from Cardiff University in 2005. Before joining Strathclyde Law School, I held lectureships at the Universities of Nottingham (2004-2006) and Dundee (2003-2004).
My main research interests are in Healthcare Law, Bioethics, and Legal Theory, and my current research focuses on beginning and end of life issues, theories of property, and meta-disciplinary concepts such as dignity, sanctity, and love. I am currently writing several articles/chapters on conscientious objection, abortion, and assisted dying, and I am also working on a monograph on the concepts of personhood and property in the context of pregnancy, under contract with Routledge.
I supervise a number of doctoral research students, and I welcome applications in Healthcare Law and/or Ethics (particularly beginning and end of life issues, the nature of healthcare, and the professional/patient relationship), Legal Theory/Philosophy, Human Dignity, and theoretical aspects of Property.
I am currently a member of the BMA Medical Ethics Committee, and in February 2014 I was appointed as the Adviser to the Parliamentary Committee scrutinising the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill.
Some recent and forthcoming publications include:
Books & book chapters
- The Jurisprudence of Pregnancy: Concepts of Conflict, Persons and Property (Routledge; forthcoming 2017)
- Ethical Judgments: Re-writing Medical Law (Hart, 2016) (co-editor and contributor)
- ‘Discovering dignity: unpacking the emotional content of killing narratives’ in H Conway and J Stannard (eds) The Emotional Dynamics of Law and Legal Discourse (Hart, 2016)
- ‘Locating Lawful Abortion on the Spectrum of Proper Medical Treatment’ in S Fovargue and A Mullock (eds.) The Legitimacy of Medical Treatment: What Role for the Medical Exception? (Routledge, 2015) 124-141
Peer-reviewed journal contributions
- ‘Death benefits: Physician-assisted dying, justification, and the problem of posthumous interests” (in progress)
- ‘Conscience as Integrity: Defending Conscience Rights in the Healthcare Context’ (with Sara Fovargue) (in press, 2016)
- ‘When Conscience Isn’t Clear: Greater Glasgow Health Board v Doogan and Another [2014] UKSC 68’ Medical Law Review (published online 30 August 2015)
- ‘Commentary: The Scope of the Conscience-Based Exemption in Section 4(1) of the Abortion Act 1967: Doogan and Wood v NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board [2013] CSIH 36’ Medical Law Review,(Summer 2014) 22 (3): 409-421 (first published online January 20, 2014)
- ‘In Good Conscience: Conscience-Based Exemptions and Proper Medical Treatment’ Medical Law Review (published online 5 May 2015) (with Sara Fovargue)
- ‘Respect for human dignity as substantive basic norm’ (2014) International Journal of Law in Context, 41(1)