Ethics Health and Social Care

Our cluster brings together researchers working across health and social care law, applied ethics, moral philosophy, socio-legal studies, adult safeguarding, disability rights, legal capacity, and related areas.

Jess Antrobus is a qualified social worker. She is currently enrolled as a PhD student at the School of Law (project title: Adult Practice Support Orders in Wales: An evaluation of the impact the power of entry has had in law, policy and practice). Jess is interested in adult safeguarding law in Wales, and also has research interests around abuse, neglect and the interface with criminal law, and the interaction between safeguarding legislation and commissioning of care.

Dr Dunja Begović has research interests in the ethics and regulation of human reproduction, as well as the end of life (especially palliative care). She has (co-)published papers on prenatal testing, maternal-fetal surgery, surrogacy and uterus transplantation, twin pregnancy reduction, the application of digital health interventions in cancer and palliative care, and care transitions for patients with advanced cancer.

Debbie Foss has worked in local government for over twenty-five years. She is employed by a local authority in northwest England and works in adult safeguarding where she is responsible for managing adult safeguarding data, analysis and performance. Debbie is currently working on her PhD which researches Best Interest Assessors’ legal understanding across a range of settings and professional backgrounds, with a special focus on the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Professor Yossi Nehushtan has research interests in legal theory, political theory, public law, human rights law, and law and religion. He has published work on conscientious objection, the right to free expression, religion and intolerance, the COVID-19 lockdowns and intergenerational justice, and constitutional instrumentalism, among other topics.

Dr Abi Pearson has primary research interests in disability, equality, human rights, and legal education. She has published work on the accessibility of undergraduate legal education for persons with disabilities, reasonable adjustments, access to public transport for people with disabilities, inclusive teaching and learning environments, and including disability perspectives in law schools.

Dr Laura Pritchard-Jones focuses her research on mental disability law, adult safeguarding, and the legal framework around social care provision for adults, and her expertise lies predominantly in the application of these areas of law for older adults. She has experience in working with a range of external and professional stakeholders to undertake and disseminate research. She has published work on ageism and autonomy in health care, vulnerable adults and adults at risk, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adult safeguarding practice, the inherent jurisdiction in adult welfare cases, and the Mental Capacity Act, sexual relationships, and intimacy.

Dr Kevin de Sabbata researches decision-making by, for, and about people in need of care and medical treatment, individuals experiencing dementia, mental disorders or other disabilities, and citizens of disadvantaged areas of the world, or societies facing public health crises. His research adopts a strongly interdisciplinary approach, combining doctrinal and empirical (quantitative and qualitative) research, and mixing law with ethics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and other relevant areas. He has published work on children’s best interests at the end of life, dementia and treatment decisions, vulnerable adults and the law, identifying cases of child abuse, reasonable accommodation for disabled university students, and citizens’ perceptions of ethical issues in COVID-19 containment measures.

Dr Sotirios Santatzoglou

Louisa Street worked as a youth worker for over 10 years, supporting young people around issues including mental health, sexual health and relationships, and drugs and alcohol. She started her PhD, exploring young people’s views on the law and policy around sexting, in September 2023. Louisa has published work on addressing online harms in policy, and online resilience and wellbeing in young people.

Dr Ezgi Taşcıoğlu has research interests ranging across the fields of socio-legal studies, law in everyday life, and social and cognitive justice, and takes an interdisciplinary approach to socio-legal research at the intersections of law, social sciences and the humanities. She has published work on supported decision making, legal capacity, transgender embodiment and the criminalisation and legal governance of trans women in Türkiye, disability rights in Türkiye and its engagement with the CRPD, intellectually disabled people’s intimate lives, supported will-making, and social care detention.

Professor Anthony Wrigley specialises in bioethics, research ethics, and applied ethics across a broad range of issues in law, medicine and society. His work has focused primarily on ethical and policy issues on the margins of life, including new and emerging technologies, genetic and reproductive technologies, consent for those who have lost capacity, mental illness, organ donation and xenotransplantation, research on vulnerable and terminally ill subjects, dying in restricted environments, and end-of-life care. He is also interested in theoretical work on underlying concepts in ethics, especially those relating to bioethics, such as harm, moral authority, vulnerability, personhood, identity, autonomy, dishonesty, hope, and trust. His work is regularly covered by the media and he has provided advice to various bodies and organisations on ethical issues, such as The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Public Health England, the NHS Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Advisory Group, and the Department of Health and Social Care. He has held a JTF-funded Research Fellowship for the Hope-Optimism Project at Cornell, Notre Dame, and Pennsylvania Universities in the USA.

Members of EHSC also have a longstanding history of research into social care, mental health, and legal regulation. Professor Alison Brammer’s research interests lie in both adult and child social welfare law, adult safeguarding, and elder abuse, and she also leads the Social Work Law Association.  

Dr Laura Pritchard-Jone's research interests are predominantly around social welfare law, adult safeguarding, and mental capacity law and she has a particular interest in how the law applies to older adults, and adults living with dementia. Her current research interests lie in particular in the use of the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction to safeguard adults who have mental capacity but who are being abused or coerced. 

Dr Ezgi Taşcıoğlu is a socio-legal scholar, exploring the role of law in the production of marginalised sexualities and gender identities. Currently, this exploration develops in two main strands: the construction of transgender citizenship in everyday life in urban Turkey, and the regulation of intellectually disabled people’s intimate lives in England and Wales. Ezgi is particularly interested in the interactions of law with social and cognitive (in)justice. Her previous work has looked at everyday decision making and supported will-making by intellectually disabled people under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Hannah Gibbons-Jone's research interests lie in caring and familial relationships (legally or socially constructed), including the forming and ending of marriage and civil partnerships by adults with learning disabilities, relationship support for elderly couples in residential care, and sibling and young carers.

Laura Pritchard-Jones, Mark Eccleston-Turner, and Alison Brammer have recently been awarded £106,824 by The Health Foundation to research the impact of COVID-19 on adult social acre and adult safeguarding, particularly the legal obligations incumbent on local authorities and Safeguarding Adults Boards.

Professor Alison Brammer was the Principal Investigator on the ESRC-funded seminar series ‘Safeguarding Adults: A New Legal Framework’, the aim of which was to explore the new legal rules around safeguarding adults at risk of abuse or neglect in the Care Act 2014.

Alison Brammer, and Laura Pritchard-Jones, together with Eva Luksaite in the School of Medicine and colleagues at VOICES of Stoke have also recently been awarded a 1+3 studentship by the Economic and Social Research Council, entitled ‘Assessing the impact of the VOICES Care Act Toolkit on needs assessments for people experiencing Multiple Exclusion Homelessness.’

Professor Anthony Wrigley was the Templeton Foundation award holder for the Philosophy of Hope and Optimism Funding Initiative for his project “Hope and Death: Despair and Absolute Hope in the Face of Inevitable Death”, which included a Fellowship at Notre Dame and Cornell Universities in the USA. He was also the Co-Investigator (with Sotirios Santatzoglou and Sue Read) for the Barrow-Cadbury Trust project “Integrating Loss and Bereavement Assessment”.

EHSC events include the regular Royal Institute of Philosophy guest speakers’ series in Healthcare Ethics and Law. Recently, a successful multi-disciplinary seminar on 'Loss, bereavement and compassionate care in the criminal justice system' was organised by members of the cluster (Sotirios Santatzoglou and Anthony Wrigley) to explore collaborative research opportunities between academics, professionals and researchers working on end of life issues and criminal justice. The seminar brought together speakers from nursing, criminology, law, psychology, and public interest groups and was attended by academics, research students, professionals from the prison service and support groups from across the country.

In 2017, Anthony Wrigley, Jonathan Hughes, and Kirsty Moreton organised a major event to mark a milestone of achievement for Keele and the School’s work in medical ethics and law: ‘30 Years of Medical Ethics and Law: looking back, moving forward’, funded by the Royal Institute of Philosophy. This brought together a wide range of leading academics and practitioners from across the country to discuss the history, achievements, and future challenges to work in medical ethics and law.

In September 2018, Anthony Wrigley and Sotirios Santatzoglou organised a major multidisciplinary conference: ‘What is the role of Compassion in Decision-Making when working with Vulnerable and Marginalised people?’, funded by the Royal Institute of Philosophy and the Keele Institute for Social Inclusion. Speakers came together from a wide range of academic and professional backgrounds to discuss the nature and importance of compassion and the needs of different vulnerable people, from prisoners to asylum seekers.

In June 2019, the School also hosted a one-day conference entitled ‘Dementia, Disability, and Human Rights’, jointly funded by the Royal Institute of Philosophy, the Keele Institute for Social inclusion, and the School of Law. The conference welcomed over 100 delegates and a range of speakers including individuals living with dementia, together with academics and practitioners from law, health care, and palliative care.

In February 2017 Professor Wayne Martin from the University of Essex delivered a guest lecture on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its implication for domestic mental capacity legislation. The lecture was attended by staff, students, and members of the public alike. A video of the event can be found here.

EHSC provides an academic home for numerous graduate students, including both full-time and part-time doctoral research students working in areas of healthcare law, bioethics, and social care. Research students in this cluster are currently working on the following thesis topics:

• Assessing the impact of the VOICES Care Act Toolkit on needs assessments for people experiencing Multiple Exclusion Homelessness (Helena Kitto)
• Law reform and assisted dying (Rebecca Hill)
• Ideology and Healthcare reforms within England (David Benbow)
• Sibling Children and Adoption (Sally Dowding)
• Pandemics (Abbie Hampton)
• “Exploring Nurses’ Thoughts About Best Interests Decisions for People with Advanced Dementia: a Qualitative, Exploratory Study” (Jayne Murphy)
• Previous student successes include research degree awards on the following topics:
• ‘What moral status, if any, ought to be ascribed to the human embryo and pre-sentient fetus?’ (Wendy Suffield)
• ‘Accommodating religious requirements in NHS Healthcare’ (Sam Griffin)
• A conceptual analysis of trust in medicine: its definition, decline, and significance’ (Markus Wolfensberger)
• What should be the role of social value in organ allocation decisions?’ (Joe Johnston)
• ‘PGD and Disability’ (Kathryn Leask)
• 'In search of a system which acquires the maximum number of organs and is consistent with a society’s values (Victoria Thornton)
• ‘Medical schools and the virtuous physician: how to ensure that physicians will do the right thing’ (Thalia Arawi)
• ‘Research governance in pharmacogenetic-based drug development: why the Principlist approach?’ (June Williams)
• ‘The Ethics of ECT’ (Geoff Ellison)
• ‘The ethical demand on the developed world of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa’ (Norman Gourlay)
• ‘Moral Particularism: Implications in medical ethics’ (Alan Green)
• 'Can we do better than the four principles? – a modest Consequentialist proposal’ (David Molyneaux)
• ‘The good health care professional: a critique of Edmund Pellegrino’s approach to essentialist medical ethics and the virtues’ (Roger Newham)
• 'Exploitation and clinical trials in developing countries' (Leena Al-Qasem)