Project Management Board
Andrew Ashworth is the Vinerian Professor of English Law. He obtained his LL.B. from the London School of Economics (1968), and then took the B.C.L. at Oxford (1970). He obtained a Ph.D. from Manchester University (1973). In 1993 he was awarded the degree of D.C.L. at Oxford and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. In 1997 he was appointed a Q.C. Honoris causa. In 1999 he was appointed a member of the Sentencing Advisory Panel, and became Acting Chairman of the Panel in 2007. He was awarded the degree of LL.D.honoris causa at De Montfort University in 1998, and the degree of Jur. D. honoris causa at Uppsala University in 2003. His first teaching position was as Lecturer (1970-76) then Senior Lecturer (1976-78) at Manchester University. From 1978 to 1988 he was Fellow and Tutor in Law at Worcester College, Oxford, and he served as Acting Director of the University's Centre for Criminological Research from 1982 to 1983. In 1988 he was appointed Edmund-Davies Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice at King's College London, and held that post until moving to All Souls College to take up the Vinerian chair in 1997.
Hazel Biggs is Professor of Law at University of Southampton. Hazel received her first degree from the University of Kent after working for several years as a radiographer and ultrasonographer in the National Health Service. Her PhD thesis examined legal and ethical aspects of euthanasia and formed the basis of her first book, Euthanasia, Death with Dignity and the Law (2001). Alongside her university activities Hazel has been involved with NHS Research Ethics Committees since 1998. She was Chair of East Kent LREC and the Metropolitan Multi-Centre Research Ethics Committee. She is also involved with education and training for members of research ethics committees and the medical research community. She became a member of the board of Research Ethics Review in 2005 and is currently a member of the editorial board of Medical Law Review.
Aneez Esmail is Professor of General Pracites and a qualified medical practitioner. He completed training as a general practitioner in 1987 and as a public health physician in 1992. He obtained his PhD from the University of London in 1996. In addition to University responsibilties as a Professor of General Practice, he also works as a clinician at the Robert Darbishire Practice, a University owned general practice located in the deprived inner city ward of Rusholme. He is an Associate Vice-President of the University with a responsibility for equality and diversity across the institution. His research is carried out in the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre (www.npcrdc.man.ac.uk) and the School of Community Based Medicine. His main research interests are currently concentrated on patient safety in primary care and issues related to ethnicity and diversity in the medical profession. For further information visit www.aneezesmail.co.uk.
Graeme Laurie is Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law. His research interests include the role of law in promoting and regulating science, medicine and technology. In 2001 he convened a World Health Organization Working Group that produced international guidelines on the establishment and maintenance of genetic databases, and from 2002-2004 he served as a member of the Interim Advisory Group on Ethics and Governance for UK Biobank. He is now the Chair of the permanent Ethics and Governance Council of UK Biobank. He isalso currently the Chair of the Privacy Advisory Committee for Scotland, and sits on other bodies such as the Scottish Executive's Generation Scotland Advisory Board and the NHS Central Register Governance Board. He recently gave evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution with respect to forensic uses of bio-information.He is a member of the editorial teams of the European Journal of Health Law, the Journal of Medical Ethics, Butterworths Medico-Legal Reports and the AHRC's own online journal SCRIPT-ed.
Jean McHale took up a chair at the University of Birmingham in September 2009. She previously taught at the Universities of East Anglia, Nottingham, Manchester and Leicester where she held a chair in Law. She has written several monographs and textbooks in the area of health care law. The second edition of her textbook Health Care Law Cases and Materials with Marie Fox (Sweet and Maxwell) and the third edition of her textbook Law and Nursing with John Tingle (Butterworth Heinemann) were both published in 2007. She is a co-editor and contributor to two major volumes of essays for Oxford University Press,Principles of Mental Health Law (1st edition) (with Peter Bartlett, Larry Gostin, Phil Fennell and Ronnie MacKay) and Principles of Medical Law (3rd Edition) (with Andrew Grubb and Judy Laing) to be published in 2010. She has published papers in wide range of legal and health care professional journals. She has given invited papers at numerous conferences and seminars to legal, health care professional and policy audiences. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Medical Law Review. She is a member of the UK Advisory Panel for Health Care Workers Affected by Blood Borne Viruses. She is also the legal member of Ethics and Governance Committee of the Airwave Health Monitoring Study which is being run jointly by the Home Office and Imperial College London. Previously she served as a member of the Promise of the Human Genome Panel of the DTI Health Task Force (1999-2000). She was a member of UK Biobank Interim Ethics and Governance Advisory Group 2003-4. She was commissioned to write a Paper onConfidentiality and Mental Health for the Expert Committee chaired by Professor Genevra Richardson into the review of the Mental Health Act 1983, published in 1999.
Nigel Meadows is H.M. Coroner for Manchester and took up his appointment in 2006 having previously been H.M. Coroner for Plymouth and S.W. Devon since 1998. He qualified as a Solicitor and was previously a partner in a firm in Plymouth specialising in professional and medical negligence cases as well as some criminal and mental health work. He was on the Criminal Duty Solicitor panel for 20 years, a member of the Law Society’s specialist panel of MHRT advocates and appointed in 2001 by the Lord Chancellor to sit as a part-time President of the Mental Health Review Tribunal (and is now a MHRT member appraiser and mentor) as well as a Legal Chairman of the Appeals Service in 2002. He was a member of the Independent Scrutiny Panel set up the Devon and Cornwall Police in relation to their unique inquiry into certain aspects of the ‘Deep Cut Deaths’ re-investigation by the Surry Police. He regularly gives lectures/talks on Coronial issues and has dealt with numerous cases of a complex nature where medicine and the criminal/civil law overlap and involve negligence, gross negligence manslaughter and PII. The longest Inquest he has dealt with to date was a six week jury case into the shooting dead of a civilian by an armed police officer.
Michael Parker is a Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Ethox Cantre at University of Oxford. His main research interest is in the development and use of multidisciplinary approaches to researching the ethical and social dimensions of biomedical science and clinical practice. His current research activities include: leading a programme of multidisciplinary researchon the ethical and social aspects of a major international genomic epidemiology consortium(MalariaGEN) which is carrying out research into severe malaria in childhood in20 countries (fundedas a Gates Grand Challenge through theFoundation for the National Institutes of Healthand the Wellcome Trust); leading research into the ethical issues arising in the development and use of e-science and Grid technologies for medical research on patient records(funded by the Medical Research Council);carrying out multidisciplinary social science, ethical and legal research on the governance of genetic databases (funded by the Wellcome Trust); and, facilitating the Genethics Club, a national ethics forum for health professionals working in clinical genetics. Michael is on a number of committees and working parties. He is a member of the Ethics in Practice Committee of the Royal College of Physicians, the Department of Health's Pandemic Influenza Ethics Committee, theSteering Committee of the UK Clinical Ethics Network, and the Steering Group of the Genethics Club. He is also a member of the editorial teamof the Journal of Medical Ethics andSeries Editor of ‘Ethics in Practice’ in the British Medical Journal. He has previously sat on a number of national and international committees and working parties including: Lord Warner’s Ad Hoc Advisory Committee on Research Ethics,the Ministerial Task Force on the Summary Care Record, the Royal College of Physicians Working Party on Clinical Ethics Committees, the British Medical Association Working Party on Cognitive Enhancement, and the Board of Directors of the International Association of Bioethics.
Catherine Peckham is Professor of Paediatric Epidemiology at the Centre for Paediatric Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London. She has contributed across a broad range of subjects including infectious disease epidemiology, vaccination policy, social and biological determinants of health in childhood and adult consequences of childhood ill-health. In 1986 she founded the multi-centre European Collaborative Study of HIV infection in mothers and children. She is currently Programme Director, Infections in Pregnancy Screening, National Screening Programme. From 2005 to 2007 she chaired the Scientific Coordinating Group of the Government's Foresight programme on the Future Challenge of Infectious Diseases. She was Vice-Chair of the Nuffield Council for Bioethics and member of the working parties on the ethics of research relating to health care in developing countries, and critical care decisions in fetal and neonatal medicine. She chaired the Confidential Enquiries Advisory Committee, NICE; the MRC Human Fertilization and Embryology Working Group on children conceived by ART; the European Forum on HIV/AIDS in Children, Families and Young People; the London Children's Task Force; the EC Quality of Life high-level expert group and the MRC/DoH Military Health Research Advisory Group
Oliver Quick studied Law & Politics at the University of Wales Cardiff, graduating in 1997. He joined the School of Law at Bristol in August 2001, where he teaches Criminal Law and Medical Law. In 2002 he was awarded his doctorate on 'Error and the Medical Profession: Regulating Trust' by the University of Wales Cardiff. He is co-author (with Nicola Lacey and Celia Wells) of Reconstructing Criminal Law (CUP, 2003). Oliver was a visiting lecturer at the University of Western Australia during 2006. He is a member of the editorial board of the Common Law World Review.
Helen Shaw has been the co-director of INQUEST since 1994. She has a BA (Combined Honours) History and Political Science from Birmingham University. Prior to joining INQUEST she worked in the voluntary sector in mental health and freelance as a trainer in developing anti-discriminatory practice within organisations. INQUEST is a unique organisation with an enviable national reputation for excellence and proven track record in providing advice and support to bereaved families and their lawyers following deaths in custody. In 2007, it won the Liberty/Justice Human Rights Award for its specialist casework service and work on the deaths of children in custody. It is consulted widely, by Government Ministers and Departments, parliamentarians, lawyers, academics, media and the wider public because of its unique body of knowledge about the investigation of contentious deaths. In her 13 years at INQUEST Helen has played an active role in a significant number of high-profile deaths in custody cases and writes regularly and is a frequent commentator on the issues raised by the organisation. Helen is also joint editor of Inquest Law, the journal of the INQUEST Lawyer’s Group. She is a member of the Independent Police Complaints Commission Advisory Group and Ministry of Justice Coroner Service Stakeholder Forum. She undertakes policy, research and consultancy work on the strategic issues raised by state accountability. She is co-author with Deborah Coles of the book Unlocking the Truth: Families’ Experiences of the Investigation of Deaths in Custody published by INQUEST in September 2007. Previous publications include How the inquest system fails bereaved people (2002 with Deborah Coles) and Inquests – An Information Pack for Bereaved People and their Advisers (2004). Helen is also a non-executive member of the non-departmental public body the Human Tissue Authority which regulates the removal, storage, use and disposal of human bodies, organs and tissues form the living and deceased and a member of the communications sub-group of the Department of Health Organ Donation Taskforce. She was previously (April 2001 – March 2004) a non-executive member of the Retained Organs Commission set up in the aftermath of the Alder Hey scandal and chaired a three month investigation into organ retention in Manchester. She is a trustee of the charities National Bereavement Partnership and British Irish Rights Watch.
Raymond Tallis is a leading British gerontologist, philosopher, poet, novelist and cultural critic. Tallis read medicine at Oxford and was a Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester between 1988 and 2006. As well as being a leading figure in British medicine, Tallis has also written numerous books on philosophy and is perhaps best known for his critique of post-Saussurean thought in books such as Not Saussure, Theorrhoea and After and for his attack upon the assumptions of much artificial intelligence research in his book Why the Mind is Not a Computer: A Pocket Dictionary on Neuromythology. However, he has also published volumes of poetry, a play, short stories and a novel. The focus of his philosophical writings has been an attempt to supply an anthropology that acknowledges what is distinctive – and remarkable – about human beings. To his end his most recent work has been a trilogy of books entitled The Hand; I Am: A philosophical Inquiry into First-Person Being; and The Knowing Animal. Tallis has recently (2007) published Unthinkable Thought: The enduring significance of Parmendies. His books on the human head The Kingdom of Infinite Space and on Hunger are due to be published this year. He has been awarded many honours for his medical research and has the honorary degrees of Doctor of Letters form the Universities of Hull and Manchester for his non-medical writings.