Medicine, health and wellbeing

• Professor Kit Barker

Kit Barker is interested in private law as a whole, but specialises in the law of torts and unjust enrichment law and the law's doctrine, philosophical foundations and remedies. More recently, his work has explored the interface between private law and public law and policy, with a focus on the tortious liability of government, misfeasance in public office and the use of private enforcers in public law.

• Professor Francesca Bartlett

Francesca Bartlett lectures in Ethics and the Legal Profession and Family Law, and researches in the area of lawyers' ethics and practice, access to justice and women and the law. 

• Professor John Devereux

John teaches and researches in medical law broadly. He has a special interest in competency to consent to medical treatment, medico-legal litigation, negligence, as well as genomics and the law. 

• Dr Allison Fish

Allison's research has addressed the application of intellectual property law to the regulation of various domains including; international markets for South Asian classical health systems, the development of digital archives and databases designed to function as defensive publications against future patents, the impact of open access on scholarly communication practices, and licensing and attribution practices in open source software communities.

• Professor Paul Harpur

Paul’s research covers industrial relations, anti-discrimination and human rights law, with a particular focus on the rights of persons with disabilities. He is currently working on an ARC Future Fellowship project entitled ‘Normalizing Ability Diversity through Career Transitions: Disability at Work’.

• Dr Ruthie Jeanneret

Ruthie's teaching and research interests lie at the intersection of law and healthcare. She is particularly interested in voluntary assisted dying and the role of patients and family caregivers in shaping healthcare regulation. 

• Dr Michelle King

Michelle is a sociologist and lawyer: her research focuses on decision-making and the operation of law and regulation in practice for people with disabilities and other impairments to communication and legal capacity. She has research interests in the sociology of law, decision-making (supported and substituted), legal personhood, the UNCPRD, disability law, legal and administrative transition to adulthood, communication impairments, and profound intellectual disability.

• Professor Rain Liivoja  

Rain’s research interests include general international law, the law of armed conflict and human rights law. His current research focuses on the legal challenges associated with military applications of science and technology, including biomedical enhancement of human performance. He is also broadly interested in the protection of medical personnel in armed conflict and military bioethics.

• Dr Stevie Martin  

Stevie’s research examines the ways in which public law impacts upon, and can provide protections for especially vulnerable sections of society (eg children and the elderly). She has particular interests in the medico-legal field, as well as family law. Her current research projects consider judicial decision-making relating to life-sustaining medical treatment of Gillick-competent minors, and the role of human rights in the context of domestic abuse.

• Dr Omkar Nadh Pattela 

Omkar’s research interests include critical social theory, political economy, science technology, society studies, financialisation and public health. His PhD thesis examined the role of various actors in the constitution of a medical biotechnology ecosystem in India. It also studied the increasing prevalence of personalised medicine particularly in the context of genomic diagnostic tests and the concomitant practices of value extraction.

• Professor Tamara Walsh

Tamara's research examines the impact of the law on vulnerable people including children and young people, people experiencing homelessness, people on low incomes, people with disabilities, mothers and carers.