Current research grants

Armstrong, Kenneth: Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, ‘The Brexit Effect: Convergence, Divergence and Variation in UK Regulatory Policy’.           

Barnard, Catherine: ESRC Brexit Priority Grant, ‘Brexit and UK and EU Immigration policy’.            

Deakin, Simon: EPSRC Research Grant,  ‘Countering Crime in the Cloud’, (led by the Computer Laboratory), a data-driven analysis of cybercrime.

Liddell, Kathy: Novo Nordisk Synergy Grant, ‘Collaborative Research Programme in Biomedical Innovation Law’, harnessing legal expertise in intellectual property law to assist scientists and clinicians with the challenge of repurposing known drugs with new medical uses.

Liddell, Kathy and Jeff Skopek: Wellcome Trust ISSF 2019 ‘An evaluation of legal, regulatory and ethical frameworks at the frontiers of medical device and drug innovation’.

Liddell, Kathy: Wellcome Trust ISSF 2020 ‘UK and European pharmaceutical substitution laws for generics and biosimilars: assessment of legal variation and its impact on healthcare spending’.

Liddell, Kathy: SHSS International Working Group ‘Developing international social science research to address the Collective Action Problem of anti-Microbial Resistance (CAP-AMR).’ Held in collaboration with Professor Jorge E. Viñuales, Department of Land Economy.

Liddell, Kathy: ‘Differential Diagnosis and the Law’ is supported by The Health Foundation funds held at The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute, Department of Public Health and Primary Care.

Menashe, Maayan: British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, ‘Re-Imagining Global Labour Rights’ Enforcement’ applies institutional-economic theory, evolutionary and epistemic game theory and the theory of law as a complex, adaptive system to research ways in which international labour law be effectively enforced, without a reliance on coercive measures.

Rogers, Jonathan: AHRC Follow-On Funding in relation to prior Research Network grant, ‘Criminal Law Reform Now Network‘, a research network which co-ordinates academics, practitioners and policy makers in considering practical reforms in the area of criminal justice. The first two projects concern the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and the regulation of private prosecutions. For further details, visit www.clrnn.co.uk

Steffek, Felix: ESRC Legal systems and AI (led by Centre for Business Research) instead of modelling a legal domain using historical data, this project explores whether the outcome of legal cases can be reliably predicted using various technique for optimising datasets.

Featured Research Projects

Collaborative Research Project in Biomedical Innovation Law – Repurposing Known Drugs

Professor Kathy Liddell is a core partner in the Collaborative Research Project in Biomedical Innovation Law (CeBIL), headed by Professor Timo Minssen at the University of Copenhagen. Other partner institutions to the research programme include the Petrie-Flom Centre for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Michigan Law School. The project is funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

Professor Liddell, with Senior Research Associate Dr John Liddicoat, will be responsible for a study focusing on repurposing pharmaceuticals with new medical uses. The project aims to harness legal expertise in the field of intellectual property to help scientists and clinicians with the challenge of repurposing known drugs. It will comprise two strands across three years:

1. Identifying the nature, source and extent of the incentive gap (if any) for developing new medical purposes for known products.

2. Studying the role of law in making re-purposing research more economically attractive, efficient and effective.

Liability for Harms Caused by the Use of AI in Healthcare

The accelerating integration of AI systems into the fabric of everyday life raises pressing questions about how legal liability will be assigned when these systems cause harm and whether the laws governing this liability should be reformed.  Jeff Skopek received a Wellcome Trust Seed Award to explore these questions as they arise in the context of healthcare. 

His project focuses in particular on the liability landscape for harms caused by the use of machine learning algorithms in medical diagnosis and treatment.  These algorithms promise to transform healthcare in two related ways: first, by recommending diagnoses and treatments that are highly personalized to individual patients; and second, by making these recommendations on the basis of a logic that is a black-box to the physicians using them. 

When these black-box algorithms out-perform doctors yet have significant error rates that cannot be eliminated, they give rise to the legal and normative questions at the core of this project.   Skopek seeks to clarify how the law of negligence and product liability might apply to harms caused by the use of such algorithms and whether either of these areas of law should be reformed or supplemented with a sui generis legislative regime for AI.