People

Professor John Coggon is Professor of Law at the University of Bristol Law School, where he is a founding member and co-director of the Centre for Health, Law, and Society. He is an honorary member of the UK Faculty of Public Health (FPH), and he sits on the ethics committees of FPH and the British Medical Journal. He is also a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, where he co-chairs the Environment and Health priority area. Professor Coggon’s research focuses on philosophical and socio-legal questions in public and global health law, and in mental capacity law. His publications include the book What Makes Health Public? (Cambridge University Press, 2012). He is programme lead for the LLM in Health, Law, and Society and supervises several PhD projects.

Dr Peter Dunne is an Associate Professor at the University of Bristol Law School and an Associate Member of Garden Court Chambers. In 2022, Dr Dunne 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. He 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, Dr Dunne regularly works on issues of LGBTI rights with domestic and European policy makers and civil society activists.

Dr Nasrul Ismail is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology with extensive research experience in examining the impact of political economy on the governance and delivery of prison health. Dr Ismail’s research is timely and applicative. It has informed the actions of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture as well as the House of Commons Justice Committee. His research findings have been referenced by politicians in the UK and have been featured by various news outlets. Dr Ismail publishes regularly in leading academic journals and has been awarded various grants for projects, as both a principal and co-investigator.

Professor Catherine Kelly is Professor of Law and History at the University of Bristol Law School, where she is also Head of School. Professor 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 medical practice.

Dr Edward Kirton-Darling is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol Law School and solicitor (non-practicing) 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 death. He is a co-editor of the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Social Welfare Law published in 2024. And he is currently working on projects focused on deaths amongst people who are homeless or precariously houses, on the relations of health planning law (as part of the TRUDD project), on Rent Repayment Orders, and on illegal eviction.

Professor Judy Laing is Professor of Mental Health Law, Rights, and Policy at the University of Bristol Law School and has a long-standing research interest in mental health/capacity law and human rights. She has published extensively on these topics. She is co-editor (with Professor Jean McHale, University of Birmingham) of Principles of Medical Law, a leading scholarly text published by Oxford University Press and now in its Fifth Edition (2025). She was a Parliamentary Academic Fellow in the House of Commons Library from 2020-2021 and been invited to give oral evidence to parliamentary select committees, including to the Joint Parliamentary Scrutiny Committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill (November 2022). She is currently leading on a UKRI funded collaborative project to develop online resources for family members/carers to improve their legal literacy on the Mental Health Act. Professor Laing is a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry and Medicine, Science and

Professor Sheelagh McGuinness is Professor of Law at the University of Bristol Law School. She has a wide-ranging interest in health law and policy, particularly, the regulation of reproduction and reproductive justice. Professor McGuinness is a co-investigator on an ESRC-funded project entitled, Death before birth: Understanding, informing, and supporting the choices made by people who have experienced miscarriage, termination, and stillbirth. She also has continued interests in the regulation of abortion.

Professor Gregory Messenger is Professor of Trade Law and Policy at the University of Bristol Law School. He is a world trade law and policy specialist. One of Professor Messenger’s principal areas of expertise is the use of trade policy tools to support the pursuit of public health measures, particularly, 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 (WTO) in scrutinising, improving, or undermining public health measures.

Mrs Elizabeth Mumford is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol Law School. Mrs Mumford is interested in a wide range of topics within health; her main areas of research and writing have been in assisted conception, the medical treatment of children, and epidemiological research. She was the first co-ordinator of our undergraduate teaching unit, Medical Law. She introduced this course to the curriculum more than thirty years ago.

Professor Ken Oliphant is Professor of Tort Law and former Head of School at the University of Bristol Law School. Professor 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, as well as comparative tort law, and compensation for incapacity.

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

Professor Oliver Quick is Professor of Health Law and Policy at the University of Bristol Law School and Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor (International Partnerships & Reputation). Professor 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. Professor Quick has also written widely about the use of criminal law for responding to fatal mistakes.

Professor Albert Sanchez-Graells is Professor of Economic Law at the University of Bristol Law School. Professor Sanchez-Graells specialises in EU and UK economic law and, in particular, competition, public procurement and digital regulation. His primary research interest involves the impact of procurement rules and practices on the effectiveness of the healthcare system, including in relation to the digitalisation of healthcare provision. Professor Sanchez-Graells is currently a member of the NHS England Independent Patient Choice and Procurement Panel. He recently acted as the procurement expert for Module 5 of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry.

Professor Sally Sheldon is Professor of Law at the University of Bristol Law School. Professor Sheldon’s research interests are 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 Contragestive Time: Pregnant Uncertainties in Fertility Control project, a 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.

Professor Keith Syrett is Professor of Health Law and Policy at the University of Bristol Law School. Professor Syrett’s research lies at the interface of law, political science, and regulatory studies. He is globally recognised for this 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, 2017). Professor Syrett has written widely on both judicial 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 Organization Technical Consultation Group on Health Systems Governance, and is a member of the Editorial Board of Medical Law International.

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

Dr Alice Venn is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol Law School. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to climate law and policy. Specifically, Dr Venn’s research focuses on legal responses to climate loss and 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 with a colleague from the School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies (SPAIS) to explore the just transition in Bristol, participation and inclusivity in the implementation of net-zero climate targets. She sits on the Bristol Advisory Committee on Climate Change and has published in related areas.