Professor John Coggon Appointed to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics

Press release issued: 3 April 2020

Last week saw the announcement that the Law School’s Professor John Coggon has been made a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, a leading independent advisory body that examines and reports on ethical issues in bioscience and health.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics informs policy and public debate on ethical and social issues. It was established in 1991 in the absence of a national UK bioethics council.

The Council comprises members from multiple disciplines, whose role is to consider questions of strategic direction, topic identification, review of ongoing work and overseeing the range and quality of outputs and activities.

Professor John Coggon, who was appointed as one of the Council’s new members on 23 March 2020, approaches his research and teaching interests in law through moral and political philosophical lenses. As a member of the University of Bristol Law School’s Centre for Health, Law, and Society, he works to achieve interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary understandings of health law and governance, looking across sectors both nationally and globally.

Commenting on his appointment, Professor Coggon said: “The Nuffield Council on Bioethics makes crucial contributions to policy, public ethics, and public discourse. Its aims to benefit society through advice that is underpinned by public values give it an essential role. I am delighted to have been appointed and to be participating in the work of the Council.”

Recent developments in science addressed by the Council include genome editing and farmed animals, mitochondrial DNA disorders, and research in global health emergencies.

The Nuffield Council produces in-depth reports alongside shorter briefing notes and background papers on important questions concerning health, policy, research, and society. It also has a blog, for which Professor Coggon recently wrote a post concerning legal and policy responses to COVID-19.

Further information

Professor John Coggon is Chair in Law at the University of Bristol and a founding member and former Co-Director of the Centre for Health, Law and Society. His primary areas of expertise are in Health Law and Policy, with particular points of focus in Public and Global Health, and Mental Capacity Law. His research is rooted in legal, moral, and political theory, and aims to bring insights from these to policy and practice.

The Centre for Health, Law, and Society (CHLS) promotes cross-disciplinary and cross-sector perspectives on the impacts of law and governance on physical, mental and social wellbeing. Based within the University of Bristol Law School, the CHLS comprises leading scholars whose work focuses on wide-ranging practical areas from within and far beyond health care systems, including clinical medicine, reproductive care, mental health, social care, and public and global health.

The Law School Coronavirus Research Hub brings together the work of academics at the forefront of global efforts to mitigate against the impact of COVID-19 through law and policy adaptation, and to understand the immediate and longer-lasting impacts of the pandemic.