Written by Dr Lucy Frith and Dr Anna Nelson

We were awarded a diversifying the curriculum award in 2022 to help us strengthen a new module that had just been approved on the post-graduate courses on healthcare ethics run by the Centre of Social Ethics and Policy, in the Law Department. The module is a 15 credit post-graduate module, ‘Research Methods in bioethics and law’, which will run for the first time in Semester 2, Spring 2024. The module aims to introduce students to different methodological approaches used in the study of bioethics, law and socio-legal studies, encourage critical thinking about these different approaches and prepare students for subsequent study (i.e., further post-graduate research).

We have two aims in this project.

1. Question methodologies. Ensure that postcolonial, indigenous and critical race theorists’ critiques and approaches to epistemology, methodology and research ethics are fully built into the design of this new module from the start, particularly ensuring the inclusion of authors in these fields and areas on the reading list and concepts discussed on the course.
2. Question content. Ensure that readings and discussions of bioethics on the course challenge and position the Eurocentric cannon, to both situate ideas of universal moral theorising in their historical-cultural context and to broaden conceptions of what is seen as bioethics, encouraging engagement with non-western ethical traditions and new thought in bioethics.

We created an annotated reading list organised by topic and area to broaden the usual cannon of bioethics which has tended to focus on Western perspective. Chattopadhyay and De Vries have recognised that: “While a Western-accented bioethics has its uses – for example, it simplifies the globalization of medical research and drug development – it ignores moral traditions whose roots and ways of thinking lie outside of the Western philosophy and political and social theory.”[i]

There are two parts to the reading list that we have produced, which relate to the two project aims. The first section focusses on the methods used when conducting bioethical, law and socio-legal research, and the potential risks that these carry. There is growing acknowledgment that traditional research practices have failed to serve communities who have been oppressed by colonisation. Extractive and exploitative practices serve to further oppression – creating scholarship which perpetuates “inaccurate stereotypes” and “dehumaniz[ing] Indigenous people and their culture”. [ii] These readings invite students to think more critically about the way research is conducted, and the impact this can have upon communities around the world.

The second section focusses on the content of research and on key topics of bioethical and legal concern. Some of these papers critique the Western-centric nature of bioethics, while others offer alternative perspectives on the discipline and on key topics of interest to bioethical scholars and students. For example, we have selected articles which consider reproductive issues from Black, Islamic, Latin American, Chinese and Middle Eastern perspectives.

We hope by introducing the students to a wider range of reading and sources, it will encourage students to think critically about the way global inequalities and processes of colonisation shape knowledge production and mainstream topics in bioethics and legal studies and how they and others can address this in their own research and scholarship. These readings also help students to place bioethics and legal issues within their wider social context. For example, the reading list includes a collection of essays by Keisha Ray et. al.[iii] which considers Black Bioethics within the specific context of Black Lives Matter. This will not only provide students with a richer learning experience; it will also build a stronger foundation from which to think critically assess some of the key principles and texts in Western bioethics, law and socio-legal studies.

Overall, this module will encourage a genuine interest in the philosophical and creative aspects of research methodology, and prepare our students to be more engaged, critical researchers. As the module specifically focusses on methodological approaches and constructing research methods for projects, it will hopefully have impact beyond the module, helping students to consider the issues around decolonisation in their own research practice.

References

[i] Subrata Chattopadhyay and Raymond De Vries ‘Bioethical Concerns are Global, Bioethics is Western’ (2009) Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 18 (4): 106–109, 106.

[ii] Vivetha Thambinathan & Elizabeth Anne Kinsella, ‘Decolonizing Methodologies in Qualitative Research: Creating Spaces for Transformative Praxis’ International Journal of Qualitative Methods (2021) 20: 1-9, 1. 

[iii] Keisha Ray et al. ‘Black Bioethics in the Age of Black Lives Matter’ Journal of Medical Humanities (2023). Jun;44(2):251-267. doi: 10.1007/s10912-023-09783-4.