Professor Kathleen Liddell

Kathy Liddell is the Herschel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property and Medical Law.

She is also the Founding Director of the Cambridge Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences, and a member of the Cambridge Centre for IP and Information Law.

Kathy undertook her doctorate in law at the University of Oxford focusing on the regulation of controversial genetic technologies in morally pluralist societies. In addition to substantial experience in academia, Prof Liddell has worked in private legal practice and in public sector legal services for a health department. This work history has provided her with a solid knowledge of commercial realities and needs, as well as experience in legal policymaking. She has degrees in law and science from the University of Melbourne and bioethics from Monash University, and is a strong advocate of interdisciplinary research.

Professor Liddell's research focuses on innovations in health, medicine and society, with the aim of understanding and improving the legal frameworks that govern and support these fields. Her expertise spans a wide variety of areas in life science including regenerative technologies, genomics, precision medicine, repurposing pharmaceuticals, and antimicrobial resistance; also national and international regulation of clinical trials, machine-learning, medical negligence, biomaterials (including human tissue, cells, organs), pharmaceuticals, and diagnostics. She has published extensively in legal and medical journals (including Nature Biotechnology, Nature, BMJ, The Lancet and various law reviews) and contributed to policy reports for national health departments, national ethical advisory commissions, and the European Commission. She is the recipient of grants from (for example) the Wellcome Trust, the Philomathia Foundation, the Cambridge ESRC-Impact Acceleration Account, and the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

Professor Liddell uses a wide range of legal methodologies in her research including in-depth statutory and case law analysis, normative analysis drawing on moral and political philosophy, policy development drawing on regulatory theory, empirical investigations (including interviews, surveys and patent mapping), and expert meetings. She has been a key member of research teams developing new empirical methodologies to evaluate the impact of patent protection on life sciences innovation.

Professor Liddell has taught a variety of courses including Law and Ethics of Medicine (tripos seminar); Law, Medicine and Life Sciences (LLM Paper 1); Intellectual Property (LLM Paper 12), Intellectual Property (tripos Paper 45) International Intellectual Property (LLM), Tort law supervisions (Downing College) and the Law PhD Research Methodologies course. She also supervises research theses at all levels including PhD students.

Professor Liddell is also a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne where she teaches 'Law and Emerging Health Technologies' (intensive LLM course).