Dr Alex Mullock is a Senior Lecturer in Medical Law at Manchester, as well as Programme Director for Health Care Ethics and Law LLM/MA/MSc. In her academic spotlight, she shares with us her background, what attracted her to work at Manchester and her area of research. 

Background 

Before my current position at Manchester, I did a PhD at Manchester (2008-2011) on a project examining criminal issues in healthcare. Prior to that, I worked as a teacher for several years teaching A level law. I had originally planned to go into legal practice after my first degree, and I worked for a short time as a paralegal in civil litigation and family law. I was undecided whether to complete the solicitor or barrister vocational training and so I decided to do a Masters instead (at Keele University), which led to my first teaching job.

Joining Manchester

The University of Manchester has an amazing reputation for Medical Law and Bioethics, with a world-leading centre – the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy – founded by Margot Brazier and John Harris over 30 years ago.

My research

When first studying law, I was most interested in social and moral aspects of the law, rather than commercial or financial matters. My favourite undergrad courses were criminal law, family law and medical law, which led me to do a research Masters in which I focused on Medical law. When I decided to consider embarking on a PhD, I was incredibly fortunate that the opportunity arose to examine criminal question in healthcare, within a project led by Professor Margot Brazier at Manchester.

I have recently advised the Government of Jersey Citizen’s Jury on assisted dying, which is due to report later in 2021, with a recommendation to legalise assisted dying in Jersey. This work has led me to revisit this topic at an interesting time, with the current House of Lords bill and developments in Scotland raising questions about this contentious question. I have also been researching non-fatal surgical harm and malpractice, with an article about the criminal convictions of two surgeons in 2017. My third current area of interest is reproductive law and ethics, and I have just co-authored an article on surrogacy and uterus transplantation.

Postgraduate engagement

I am the Programme Director for the Healthcare Ethics and Law LLM/MA/MSc and so I am very involved with all aspects of the course. I meet students during the induction in the first week, and then my main teaching is in the second semester when I lead one of the optional courses, Medicine, Law and Society. The final part of the course requires a dissertation and I run several dissertation workshops for the whole group, as well as supervising some students individually.

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