The Centre's members
The centre is directed by Sarah Devaney and Alexandra Mullock, who took over from Simona Giordano in August 2020.
Neil Allen
Neil is a practising barrister and has published various articles on mental health and incapacity law, leading a number of taught courses spanning medico-legal problems and ethics.
Rebecca Bennett
Rebecca has comprehensive research and teaching experience spanning widely diverse issues in bioethics.
She is a Professor of Bioethics, Director of Teaching and Learning in the Law School and responsible for the launch of the short online CPD courses in medical ethics and law.
Catherine Bowden
Catherine is a Research Associate currently working as part of a multidisciplinary team on the RAPID-RT project based at The Christie exploring attitudes to sharing real world health data in order to improve outcomes for patients receiving radiotherapy for lung cancer. She has also worked on the GP Data Trust pilot study.
Her research interests also include the legal and ethical issues surrounding pregnancy, particularly in relation to smoking and alcohol. Prior to completing her PhD researching Maternal Liability for Prenatal Harm, at the University of Manchester, she worked as a solicitor in commercial law and clinical negligence. She has also taught tort law, medical law, and leadership courses at the University for the past seven years.
Iain Brassington
Iain is a philosopher by background. His research portfolio is varied, concentrating mainly on moral problems arising from medicine and the biosciences, but with occasional forays into other areas of law and regulation; the aim is to use the tools of analytic philosophy to understand and refine law.
He sits on a number of ethics committees, and is a frequent contributor to national and international media debates on bioethical issues.
Margaret Brazier
Margot is Professor Emerita in Law. She has published widely on health law and the seventh edition of her textbook Medicine Patients and the Law (with Emma Cave and Robert Heywood) will be published in 2022.
She was awarded a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship in 2018 for 'Law and Healing: Reflecting on English Medico Legal History'.
Sarah Devaney
Sarah is a Co-Director of CSEP which she joined as a PhD student and Graduate Teaching Assistant in 2004. She teaches across the Healthcare Ethics and Law courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as supervising a number of PhD students on healthcare law and regulation topics.
She undertakes research on the regulation of professionals in science and medicine and on the regulation of emerging biotechnologies.
Lucy Frith
Lucy joined CSEP in October 2021, from the University of Liverpool. She conducts research at the interface of bioethics and social science with research interests in: empirical bioethics; reproductive technologies; organisational ethics; public involvement in healthcare; and the use of evidence in practice and policy. She is principal investigator on the UKRI ESRC funded project ConnecteDNA that is exploring how people involved in donor conception both use and are impacted by the rise in online DNA testing, and the UKRI AHRC Reset Ethics Project that explored the ethical issues raised by managing non-Covid paediatric and maternity care during the Covid pandemic.
Fae Garland
Fae joined the Law Department in September 2016, after having been a Lecturer of Law at the University of Exeter where she also completed a PhD.
Fae’s research interests predominantly centre on family law, gender and socio-legal research. Most recently, Fae’s work has focused on intersex rights and law.
Leah Gilman
Leah is a Research Fellow on the ConnecteDNA project, led by Dr Lucy Frith, which is investigating the social and ethical implications of direct-to-consumer DNA testing and donor conception. She has a background in Sociology and her research and publications explore reproduction, family relationships, childhood and the sociology of morality.
Simona Giordano
Simona has published on a variety of bioethics topics that range from moral philosophy, to psychiatric ethics, genetics, IVF, child abandonment, end-of-life issues, sports ethics and many others.
Nicola Glover-Thomas
Nicola is a Professor of Medical Law and is the current Director of Research in the Law School. Her research interests focus around three main themes: mental health law analysed through a socio-legal perspective; law and pharmaceuticals; and pharmacogenomics and the socio-legal implications of this.
Caroline Henaghan
Caroline completed her PhD at Manchester in 2019. Following the award of an ESRC/NWSSDTP 2020 Postdoctoral Fellowship, she is now a Research Fellow within CSEP.
With Dr Alexandra Mullock as her mentor, she is developing a number of interdisciplinary publications from her doctoral thesis on women's premenstrual disorders.
Søren Holm
Søren is a medical doctor and philosopher. He has worked in bioethics, philosophy of medicine, and scientific integrity since the early 1990s, publishing more than 180 papers in peer-reviewed journals on a very wide range of issues.
Mark Josef Rapa
Mark Josef is a Lecturer in Bioethics and Medical Law, teaching on both PG and UG level. They read law the at the University of Malta and subsequently an LLM in Health Care Ethics and Law at the University of Manchester. They have worked as a columnist for a Maltese newspaper, writing on bioethics, and good governance in politics.
Mark is also a sexual health activist who based in Manchester continue to promote and champion PrEP and HIV care in Malta. Their research interests include infectious diseases and public health, genetics and media representation of bioethics.
Kirsty Keywood
Kirsty supervises a number of doctoral research projects and is particularly interested in health care decision-making by, with and for vulnerable adults.
Jonathan Lewis
Jonathan is a Research Fellow in Bioethics and Medical Law. He is, currently, Co-Principal Investigator for the HYBRIDA project (‘Embedding a Comprehensive Ethical Dimension to Organoid-based Research and Resulting Technologies’; SwafS, Horizon 2020). His research is situated at the intersections of bioethics, medical law, moral psychology and health policy.
Victoria Moore
Victoria is a Lecturer in Law (Healthcare). She completed her PhD at the University of Manchester on the topic of regulatory responses to patients safety incidents during hospital discharges. Victoria's research interests include healthcare law and regulation, and patient safety.
Alexandra Mullock
Alex is a Co-Director of CSEP (with Sarah Devaney). She joined CSEP in 2008, initially as a PhD student. Alex teaches across a number of healthcare law courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level as well as teaching criminal law to undergraduates, and she supervises several PhD students.
Her research interests focus mainly on end-of-life law, the legitimacy of ethically contentious medical interventions and criminal matters in medicine.
Anna Nelson
Anna is a Teaching Associate, delivering teaching on medical law and criminal law courses. She completed her PhD at the University of Manchester looking at the intersection between partial ectogenesis (also called extracorporeal gestation) and access to choice during childbirth.
Her research interests include reproductive technology, choice in childbirth and gendered experiences of healthcare.
Amanda Odell-West
Amanda completed the MA in Law and PhD in Law at Sheffield University before taking up a lectureship in law at Manchester University.
Previously, she was an experienced critical care nurse. Her research intersects patent law, biotechnology and health care.
Caroline Redhead
Caroline is a Research Fellow and a (newly) non-practising corpotate/commercial solicitor (England/Wales and Hong Kong). Caroline has an LLM in Child Law and a PhD in Palliative Care, exploring the influence of legal consciousness on the way hospice staff understand the Mental Capacity Act, 2005.
Caroline’s research interests lie broadly in the dynamic interplay between law, ethics (particularly bioethics) and social change. She is interested in decision-making processes and practices, and how people navigate legal and ethical frameworks in their everyday lives.
Catherine Stanton
Catherine's interests and doctoral supervision focuses around issues relating to the use of human genetic information, reproductive technologies and clinical negligence litigation.
In Memoriam
Annie Austin
Annie was an honorary member of CSEP after we were fortunate to have her as a colleague from 2016 to 2020. Annie completed her PhD in Applied Social Science in 2015 and joined the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy in 2016. Prior to joining The University of Manchester, she worked for several years doing social policy research in the public, private and third sectors. Annie had a degree in Philosophy and an MSc in Social Change. Annie’s award-winning research has been highly influential, and she was a brilliant supervisor to a number of our PhD candidates.
When her contract ended, she accepted an Honorary position with us.
Annie has been a much loved respected colleague and friend. She was clever, kind, hardworking, funny, original, and extraordinarily brave, in her research and in her life. Annie had a true love for philosophy; was always happy to take part in any activity of the centre and to support anyone who needed her help. All of us at CSEP cherish the memory of the precious time we have had together, and, in our hearts, she will continue to live as a member of our CSEP family.