Tackling public health challenges
Birmingham Law School research is engaging with the biggest public health challenges of our time through a legal lens that’s bold, critical, and globally connected. Our research is shaping real-world change. From rethinking regulation to challenging outdated legal foundations, we’re not just responding to public health issues—we’re helping redefine how law can protect wellbeing in a rapidly changing world.
Leading conversations on global health
Before his lecture, we sat down with Professor Gostin to ask him some questions.
Professor Rosie Harding awarded Honorary King’s Counsel role
Engaging with legal practice, with research that matters
Read about Professor Harding's workProfessor Harding's work to improve access to justice for disabled people has been recognised by His Majesty the King.
Providing a hub for collaboration
HEAL
HEAL conference 2026On 17 June 2026, Birmingham Law School and the Centre for Health Law Science and Policy are delighted to be hosting the first conference of the new Health Ethics and Law UK and Ireland Association (HEAL).
HEAL will bring together those interested in health law and ethics from across the UK and Ireland. This one-day inaugural conference will include a plenary by Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery, a leading scholar in this area who has chaired several NHS organisations including the Health Research Authority, along with six parallel streams containing papers across a range of sub-areas of the discipline.
Our researchers working on this mission
Our researchers working on this mission
- Kate Bedford's research focuses on law and development, and gender and political economy. She also researches gambling law and regulation, including public health implications.
- Amber Dar's research focuses on regulation and responsibility for innovation in healthcare for children, partnerships between health and law.
- Fiona de Londras' work concerns the role and function of rights in contentious policy fields, inquiring into how (if at all) rights shape the making of law and policy in complex contexts of, for example, counter-terrorism, reproductive rights, and the implementation of international legal standards.
- Alana Farrell is a socio-legal researcher with a focus on the intersections of law, gender, and information creation and dissemination. She has a particular interest in reproductive justice, gender-based healthcare and disability rights.
- Rosie Harding uses empirical and conceptual socio-legal methods to investigate the place of law in everyday life, with a focus on social justice, family law and disability law.
- Atina Krajewska is a health lawyer specialising in global health law and sexual and reproductive justice, developing the sociology of health law.
- Jean McHale's research is in the area of Health & Care law. Jean’s work also includes pandemic planning with specific reference to adult social care, and also pandemic responses.
- Kirsty Moreton’s research focuses on healthcare law and ethics primarily involving capacity and decision-making involving children, in the context of trans healthcare, end of life, religious belief, and disagreement between parents and clinicians.
- Iyan Offor’s research focuses on the pursuit of multispecies flourishing (health, wellbeing and liveliness of animals, nature and society), leading the Multispecies Collective. The Collective engages in research projects, events (including the UK Animal Law Conference), and impact work to make a difference to human and non-human lives in an age of ecological emergency.
- Lucía Berro Pizzarossa is a British Academy International Fellow at Birmingham Law School and an Affiliated researcher of the Global Health and Rights Project at The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School
- Muireann Quigley's research focuses on law, regulation, and policy relating to bodies, biomaterials, and biotechnologies.
- Tara Lai Quinlan adopts public health approaches for tackling radicalisation and violent extremism which emphasise community safety and co-production de-emphasises selective and punitive criminal justice responses to crime and violence epidemics.
- Samantha Schnobel's research focuses on torts and regulation, in particular the theoretical and doctrinal nature of obligations, and the regulation of human and nonhuman animal bodies.
- John Tingle's research focuses on the legal aspects of patient safety, nationally and globally.
- Clare Williams' research sits at the intersection of law, economy and society and focuses on economic sociology of law (ESL), law and political economy (LPE), disability law and justice, equality, public law and regulation.
Press and media
Press and media
Other projects
Other projects
- COVID-19 social care easements: removing rights from the vulnerable
Devised to ‘ease’ staffing pressures during the pandemic, how do emergency social care easements impact support for society’s most vulnerable? - The COVID-19 Review Observatory
The COVID Review Observatory (CVRO) is a resource that records, tracks, and assesses reviews of responses to the COVID-19 pandemic from a human rights perspective. - Building Reproductive Justice with Indigenous Women in Northeast Brazil
Our project aims to consolidate reproductive justice by enhancing access to Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare of Indigenous women in accordance with their cultural practices.
- The Centre for Health Law, Science and Policy brings together colleagues from across the University of Birmingham to explore challenges in the evolution of health and social care law and policy.
Embedding our work on public health challenges in our teaching
Our work on tackling public health challenges is embedded into activities across the School. Our final year Legal Issues in Healthcare module examines the interface between legal regulation and healthcare practice, whilst our Environmental Law module considers environmental harms to health and legal mechanisms to minimise the same.
Students volunteering through our Pro Bono Group worked to produce a video commissioned by the charity, Changing Our Lives, to help people with learning difficulties understand their rights.
Our Pro Bono Group student volunteers also work with supervising solicitors from Sequentus to assist nurses and midwives who are the subject of fitness to practise proceedings by their regulator and who, for whatever reason, do not have access to legal representation.