February 2023

Sheelagh McGuinness gave a lecture entitled "Reproductive Decision-Making in the Court of Protection" for the South West Administrative Lawyers Association (SWALA) at the Guildhall Chambers in Bristol. Drawing on BABEL research, Sheelagh's lecture explored themes that emerge from the approach to decision-making in the CoP, including issues of time, foetal interests/ value, and prospective decision-making.

January 2023

Richard Huxtable presented at the Society of Intensive Care of the West of England in Chepstow (on “Futility, Ethics and the Law”).

November 2022

Richard Huxtable presented at the 18th Supportive Care for the Renal Patient Meeting in Manchester (on “In the Best Interests of the Patient? Decision-making for those who have lost capacity”).

September 2022

Richard Huxtable, Jonathan Ives, Giles Birchley and Emanuele Valenti attended the EACME 2022 conference in Varese, Italy. The theme of the conference was "Enhancing dialogue to bridge the gaps in bioethics". Both Richard and Emanuele chaired a panel session, and all four attendees presented a paper at the conference. The papers presented were:

1. "Systematic reviews in bioethics: a problematic addition to bioethics methodology." J. Ives.
2. "Moral psychology and bioethics: A challenge to the value of autonomy?" G. Birchley.
3. "Come Together? Empirical Bioethics and Socio-Legal Studies in Dialogue." R. Huxtable.
4. "The application of best interests standard in healthcare: a narrative synthesis of empirical studies." E. Valenti.

June 2022

Aoife Finnerty and Judy Laing attended the World Congress on Adult Capacity (WCAC) 2022 at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. They presented a piece that combined an overview of the BABEL Project and the current tasks of Workstream 2 (WS2) with some early themes emerging from the WS2 interviews. Judy discussed the work and aims of the project and the approach being taken in WS2. The thematic discussion, which Aoife presented, could broadly be explained as ‘best interests: then, now and into the future’. It brought together how best interests was understood by practitioners pre- or in the early days of the Mental Capacity Act, what they currently understand it to mean (i.e. process versus specific outcome) and their views on the need for reform in this area.

April 2022

Aoife Finnerty attended the Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Conference. She presented a paper, which discussed decision-making frameworks for adults lacking capacity in Ireland and the United Kingdom (England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), at the Mental Capacity and Mental Health stream. She received constructive feedback on the presentation from academics coming from the various jurisdictions, as well as feedback more broadly on the project itself.

September 2019

Suzanne Doyle-Guilloud attended the SLS Conference 2019 at the University of Central Lancashire. She presented a paper for BABEL Workstream 2 entitled The development of the concept of ‘best interests’ in adult healthcare decision-making in England and Wales, within the medical law section of the conference. The conference provided an opportunity to engage with legal scholars conducting research in related areas, as well as receive critical feedback.
 
Richard Huxtable and Giles Birchley attended the EACME 2019 conference at Keble College, University of Oxford. Giles presented a paper for BABEL Workstream 1 entitled “Medical” vs “all other” interests when judging children’s welfare: a valid distinction?”