Imogen Goold Appointed Visiting Professor of Medical Law

Lecture Series Covers Children & Consent to Medical Treatment, Body Part Ownership, Freezing Eggs

Gresham College, London’s oldest Higher Education Institution, is delighted to announce the appointment of Imogen Goold as Visiting Professor of Medical Law in 2021-2.

Goold is Associate Professor of the Faculty of Law at Oxford, and has published widely on medical law with books including Great Debates in Medical Law. She will be giving a series of three free public lectures on children and consent to medical treatment, body part ownership and freezing eggs.

Goold was an associate editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, and interned at the World Health Organisation, working on genetic testing. Before coming to Oxford, she worked on the Australian Law Reform Commission inquiries into Gene Patenting and Genetic Information Privacy.

She has written on issues such as the ownership of human body parts, reproductive medicine and obligations to neuroenhance. Her current focus is the legal regulation of decisions regarding children, and she has recently edited two volumes of essays on this topic. She is currently working on a book on the law and ethics of decisions about children’s medical care (with Cressida Auckland of the LSE).

Visiting Professor Goold said: “I am a strong believer in Gresham’s mission to bring academic work to the wider community. I’ve undertaken public engagement work on abortion law and women’s stories, on human enhancement, and on body part ownership and I believe public engagement and outreach from the academic sphere to the wider public is hugely important.”

As Visiting Professor of Law, Goold will continue the 425-year-old tradition of delivering free lectures aimed at the public within the City of London and beyond. Gresham College live streams lectures online and delivers them to physical audiences in London, with over  6 million views of lectures online last year.  More than 2,500 past lectures are freely available to view on the College’s website. Gresham has given law lectures since 1597 when Law was one of the original seven Gresham Professorships established in Thomas Gresham’s will.

Dr Simon Thurley, Provost of Gresham College, said: “We’re delighted to have Imogen Goold join us as a Visiting Professor. She brings with her a wealth of expertise on medical law in some highly controversial areas that are very relevant for society right now because of the way medical treatment and practices are changing, and is a clear and brilliant communicator.”

More about Imogen Goold