Aoife Finnerty
Research Fellow

Profile

Biography

LLB (University of Limerick); MA in Medical Ethics and Law (King's College London) PhD (University of Limerick) 

I joined the Administrative Fairness Lab at the University of York in January 2025, having previously worked on the Wellcome Trust funded BABEL Project at the University of Bristol. 

Research

Overview

I am primarily interested in the way in which the law interacts with healthcare and have a particular interest in its interaction with reproduction. I have explored informed consent, advance decision-making and compulsory treatment in pregnancy in my research, as well as mental capacity and mental health more broadly.

I have experience in doctrinal and socio-legal (qualitative) research methods and enjoy being exposed to new approaches and techniques. 

Publications

Selected publications

• Aoife Finnerty and Judy Laing, ‘Best interests, benefit, will and preference: The influence of international human rights and external actors on decision-making frameworks in the United
  Kingdom and Ireland’ (2022) 85 International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 101841.
• Harleen Kaur Johal, Aoife Finnerty and Jordan Parsons, ‘“Harmful” Choices and Subjectivity: Against an Externalist Approach to Capacity Assessments’ (2022) 22 American Journal of Bioethics 78.
• Aoife Finnerty, ‘The Privilege of Information – An Examination of the Defence of Therapeutic Privilege and its Implications for Pregnant Women’ (2021) 29 Medical Law Review 639.