People

The Centre for Health, Law and Society includes leading legal researchers and teachers in health law. We focus on a diversity of historical, contemporary and future challenges, collaborating with colleagues from multiple academic disciplines and with partners in policy, practice and the community.

Professor John Coggon
Professor John Coggon's research focuses on the relationships between politics, morality, and health law and policy. He has written on various controversial questions, including end-of-life law, organ donation, and confidentiality, but his primary areas of interest are in public health ethics and law, and mental capacity law. He is on the British Medical Journals ethics committee, in June 2016 was made an Honorary Member of the UK’s British Medical Journals ethics committee and in 2020 was appointed to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.

Dr Peter Dunne
Peter Dunne is a Senior Lecturer at the school of law, and an Associate Member of Garden Court Chambers. In 2022, Peter was awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to explore the rights of trans and non-binary populations in the family law of England and Wales. His research considers the intersections of law, sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics. Peter is particularly interested in how medico-legal frameworks are deployed to control, produce and pathologise identity. He has published on issues relating to queer healthcare in leading journals, including the Medical Law Review, Common Market Law Review and Public Law. With a strong emphasis on policy development and reform, Peter regularly works on issues of LGBTI rights with domestic and European policy makers and civil society actors.

Dr Nasrul Ismail
Nasrul Ismail is a social scientist with extensive research experience in examining the impact of political economy on the governance and delivery of prison health. Timely and applicative, Nasrul’s research has informed the actions of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, the World Health Organization, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, and the House of Commons Justice Committee. His findings have also been referenced by politicians in the UK and have been featured in news outlets such as the Byline Times and the Daily Mirror. To date, Nasrul has published over 40 papers in leading academic journals and has generated over £200,000 in external funding as both a principal and a co-investigator on numerous projects.

Professor Catherine Kelly
Professor Catherine Kelly's research focuses on law’s interaction with medicine and the medical profession in both historical and contemporary contexts. In her historical work she examines the ways in which laws relating to the medical sciences were made, applied and changed.Her interest in current medical laws is informed by her experience working at the Australian Medical Association and focuses on professional regulation and the implementation of public health legislation and policy. In both contexts her work encourages reflection about the development of the medical profession and the legal system’s framing and understanding of disease.

Dr Edward Kirton-Darling
Ed is a lecturer and solicitor (non-practising) with interests in social welfare, housing/homelessness, and investigations into contentious deaths. His book Death, Family and the Law: The Contemporary Inquest in Context was published in 2022 and explores the way in which the inquest system understands the role of the bereaved in investigations into deaths. He is a co-editor of the forthcoming Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Social Welfare Law, and is currently working on projects focused on deaths amongst people who are homeless or precariously housed, on the relations of health and planning law (as part of the TRUUD project), on Rent Repayment Orders and on illegal eviction.

Professor Judy Laing
Judy Laing is Professor of Mental Health Law, Rights and Policy and has a long-standing research interest in mental health/capacity and healthcare law. She has published extensively on these topics. Judy is now an expert adviser to the Care Quality Commissions Mental Health Act Advisory Group (2014-present) and is a member of the editorial boards of the Medical Law Review and Journal of Medical Law and Ethics.

Professor Sheelagh McGuinness
Professor Sheelagh McGuinness has wide-ranging interests in health law and policy, particularly the regulation of reproduction and reproductive justice. Sheelagh is a co-investigator on an ESRC funded projected entitled Death before Birth: Understanding, informing and supporting the choices made by people who have experienced miscarriage, termination, and stillbirth and she has continued research interests in the regulation of abortion.

Professor Greg Messenger
Greg Messenger is a world trade law and policy specialist. One of his principal areas of expertise is in the use of trade policy tools to support the pursuit of public health measures, especially in the field of non-communicable diseases. He is currently co-lead on an NIHR project examining the practice of committees at the World Trade Organization in scrutinising, improving, or undermining public health measures.

Ms Lisa Montel
Lisa Montel is a Honorary Research Associate in Law. Her main research interests lie with the legal determinants of health to remedy health inequalities. She worked on the TRUUD project to reduce the risks associated with non-communicable diseases in urban development. She is completing her PhD on the human right to health for breast cancer patients at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Lisa now works at the International Atomic Energy Agency on the PACT programme to improve access to radiotherapy in low- and middle-income countries.

Mrs Elizabeth Mumford
Elizabeth Mumford is interested in a wide range of topics within this field; her main areas of research and writing have been in assisted conception, the medical treatment of children and epidemiological research. Elizabeth is the co-ordinator of our undergraduate unit in Medical Law. She introduced this course to the curriculum more than 25 years ago and arranged for law students and intercalating medical students to study the subject together.

Professor Ken Oliphant
Professor Ken Oliphant has written and researched extensively on the topic of civil liability for medical malpractice, both in domestic law and comparatively. His current research projects involve a wide-ranging set of topics relating to English, European and comparative tort law, and compensation for incapacity.

Professor Aurora Plomer
Professor Aurora Plomer has a dual background in Philosophy and Law. Her current research focuses on International and European Intellectual Property law, human rights and the regulation of new biotechnologies. Aurora has been a member of the Panel of Ethics Experts at the European Commission, DG Research and Innovation, since 2013.

Professor Devyani Prabhat
Professor Devyani Prabhat’s work on citizenship and immigration focusses on rights and capabilities and adopts a categorical lens using class, race, gender and age as relevant categories for inter-disciplinary analysis of the law. Her recent research has examined the access to health services for various categories of migrants and mental health implications of precarious legal status. Dr Prabhat is interested in various macro-political issues which impact on immigration and nationality laws such the role of lawyers and the legal profession, issues of national security, economic and political constraints on work and voting, and the commitments made towards various categories of migrants.

Professor Oliver Quick
Professor Oliver Quick is interested in medical professionalism, the problem of regulating patient safety, and more generally public health law and ethics. In 2011, he was commissioned to undertake a scoping study on ‘The Effects of Health Professional Regulation on those Regulated’ for the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care. He has also written widely about the use of criminal law for responding to fatal medical mistakes.

Professor Albert Sanchez-Graells
Albert specialises in economic law and, in particular, competition and public procurement. Albert has analysed in detail the UK's model of centralised procurement through the NHS Supply Chain. He is currently monitoring the reform of NHS procurement rules that will follow from the Health and Care Act 2022. Albert has also been closely following the governance of extremely urgent procurement during the covid pandemic. His primary research interest lies in the impact of procurement rules and practices on the effectiveness of the healthcare system.

Professor Sally Sheldon
Sally researches in healthcare ethics and law, with a particular focus on abortion law. Her recent projects have included a study of the challenges raised for law by abortion pills, and a historical study of the Abortion Act (1967), resulting in a co-authored monograph, The Abortion Act 1967: a Biography of a UK Law. Sally is a member of the research team for the SACHA: Shaping Abortion for Change project, co-editor of the pioneering Law in Context Series, a long-standing member of the editorial board of Social & Legal Studies: an International Journal, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Ms Rebecca Stickler

Rebecca is interested in all aspects of mental capacity law, public law and health and social care law. Between 2007 and December 2018, she practised as a barrister in England and Wales specialising in Mental Capacity and Public Law. She has extensive experience of working with the Court of Protection and was repeatedly ranked as a leading barrister for Court of Protection and Public Law in legal directories. Since April 2019, Rebecca has been working as a Research Fellow with the 3-year AHRC-funded project, Judging Values and Participation in Mental Capacity Law.

Professor Keith Syrett
Professor Keith Syrett's research lies at the interface of law, political science and regulatory studies. Keith is globally recognised for his work on the rationing of healthcare resources and the law, the subject of his book, 'Law, Legitimacy and the Rationing of Health Care' (Cambridge University Press, 20017). He has written widely both on judical intervention in allocation decision making and on health technology assessment as an activity of the modern state. He is a member of the Executive Committees of the International Society on Priorities in Health Care and the British Association for Canadian Studies, sits on the World Health Organisaton Technical Consultation Group on Health Systems Governance and is a member of the Editorial Board of Medical Law International.

Mrs Sumayyah Malna
Sumayyah Malna is a lecturer and practising solicitor with expertise in inquests, mental health, and mental capacity. She works pro bono with students in the University of Bristol Law Clinic, where she set up and continues to lead an inquest team - providing free of charge legal advice and representation to bereaved families. She also leads on providing pro bono Court of Protection advice and support, and well as mental health law related advice.

Dr Alice Venn
Dr Alice Venn is a legal scholar with a focus on interdisciplinary approaches specialising in climate law and policy. Her work focuses on legal responses to climate loss & damage, government accountability, and rights-based approaches to climate change. It is framed by climate justice, including both distributive and procedural approaches to climate governance, responding to unequal climate burdens, participation in climate decision-making, and access to justice in climate matters. She has recently co-led a project exploring the just transition in Bristol, participation and inclusivity in the implementation of net-zero climate targets alongside Dr Alix Dietzel from the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies. She sits on the Bristol Advisory Committee on Climate Change and has published in the areas of climate law and justice.

Dr Bonnie Venter
Bonnie is a Law Lecturer and co-director of the Centre for Health, Law and Society at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on the relationship between the law and organ donation and transplantation. She is particularly interested in how the various role players (donors, recipients and healthcare professionals) experience the socio-legal realities of donation and transplantation. She has published on various issues relating to organ donation and transplantation within the UK and South African context. Bonnie has collaborated on several interdisciplinary research projects across health and law, including with the South African Medical Research Council and New York University. She is an elected member of the UK Kidney Association’s Ethics and Law Committee and the European Society for Organ Transplantation’s Living Donation Working Group.