Biography
Heloise Robinson is a Stipendiary Lecturer in Law at St Hugh’s, and previously worked as a Lecturer or as a Fellow at other Oxford colleges. During the 2025-2026 academic year, she is also an Academic Visitor at the Uehiro Oxford Institute, where she is conducting research on applied ethics. Her main interests relate to medical law and bioethics, disability law and philosophy, equality, and feminist legal theory. She is also a qualified barrister and solicitor in Ontario, Canada, and prior to starting her academic work practised law for some years.
Her work has been published in leading generalist law and bioethics journals, including the Modern Law Review, Legal Studies, the Journal of Medical Ethics (including a Feature Article), and the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. Much of her current research examines legal and ethical questions surrounding the use of techniques to select against disability, and she is the author of Selecting against Disability in the Liberal State (under contract with CUP), and one of the editors of Philosophical Foundations of Disability Law (with Jonas-Sébastien Beaudry and Jonathan Herring, under contract with OUP). She has also written on stigma theory and human rights, on the relationship between offensive speech and free speech, and has edited a journal Special Issue, following on from a conference she convened in Oxford.
She has also recently published a new argument on personhood and the status of pregnant women, and she is now developing the argument further in a monograph, provisionally titled Pregnant Personhood: An Argument About Equality (under contract with OUP).
She frequently speaks about her research at major conferences and other events in the UK and abroad.
Teaching
At St Hugh’s, Heloise teaches Constitutional Law and Administrative Law. In previous years and at other colleges in Oxford, she taught many other subjects, including Medical Law and Ethics, Tort Law, Contract Law, Criminal Law, and Jurisprudence. She also set up and taught Disability and Equality, apparently the first course on disability offered through the Oxford Law Faculty.
At the postgraduate level, she has taught BCL seminars in Medical Law and Ethics, and has supervised postgraduate research. She has also assessed DPhil research at different stages, in relation to medical law and ethics, disability law, and legal philosophy.
Publications
Under contract (OUP): Pregnant Personhood: An Argument About Equality
Under contract (CUP): Selecting against Disability in the Liberal State: Choice, Equality, and the Limits of Neutrality
Under contract (OUP): co-editor (with Jonas-Sébastien Beaudry and Jonathan Herring), Philosophical Foundations of Disability Law
Under contract: chapter on legal and ethical issues surrounding infants with a life-limiting condition, in above collection
Under contract: co-author of chapter on disability law and philosophical foundations, in above collection
‘Should conditional deceased organ donation be permitted? Identifying legal and ethical considerations’ (with Farrah Raza et al.), (2025) Medical Law International, published online: https://doi.org/10.1177/09685332251314113
‘Gestation most certainly matters, but it need not involve an “emotional relationship”’ Journal of Medical Ethics (2024), DOI: 10.1136/jme-2024-110412
‘A Right to Live Without Stigma? Examining Negative Stereotyping, Negative Messages, and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights’ (with Jonathan Herring), (2024) 44 Legal Studies 685, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/1st.2024.27
‘The Joys of Fragile X: Understanding the Strengths of Fragile X and Delivering a Diagnosis in a Helpful, Holistic Way’ (with Jonathan Herring et al.), Neurodiversity, Volume 2: 1-13 (2024)
‘Naming and Describing Disability in Law and Medicine’ (with Jonathan Herring), (2024) 33(3) Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 401
‘Defending Superior Moral Status in Pregnancy: A Response to Commentaries’ (2024) 50 Journal of Medical Ethics 31
‘Discrimination in Abortion Law and the Message the Law is Sending: R (Crowter) v Secretary of State for Health and Social Care’ (2024) 87(1) Modern Law Review 218
‘Pregnancy and Superior Moral Status: A Proposal for Two Thresholds of Personhood’ (2024) 50 Journal of Medical Ethics 12 (Feature Article)
Suicide and the Law (Elizabeth Wicks, Hart 2023) (2024) 87(4) Modern Law Review 1066 (book review)
Guest Editor, special issue of The New Bioethics on ‘Prenatal Testing, Disability, and the Ethical Society’, volume 29, issue 3, 2023
‘Prenatal Testing, Disability, and the Ethical Society’ (2023) 29(3) The New Bioethics 195 (guest editorial)
‘Prenatal Testing, Disability Equality, and the Limits of the Law’ (2023) 29(3) The New Bioethics 202
The Disability Bioethics Reader (Joel Michael Reynolds and Christine Wieseler, eds, Routledge, 2022) (Autumn 2023) 31(4) Medical Law Review 623 (book review)
The Disabled Contract: Severe Intellectual Disability, Justice and Morality (Jonas-Sébastien Beaudry, Cambridge University Press, 2021) (2023) 86(1) Modern Law Review 293 (book review)
Good Ethics and Bad Choices: The Relevance of Behavioral Economics for Medical Ethics (Jennifer S. Blumenthal-Barby, The MIT Press, 2021) (2022) 28(2) The New Bioethics 188 (book review)
‘Abortion on the Basis of a Risk of Disability: The Parents’ Interests and Shared Interests’ in AM Phillips, TC de Campos and J Herring, Philosophical Foundations of Medical Law (Oxford University Press 2019)
Selected talks
Moderator (with Alberto Giubilini) for panel discussion with Julian Savulescu and Ben Hurlbut on ‘The Moral Stakes of Germline Genome Editing’ for a conference on ‘History, Eugenics, and Human Enhancement: How the Past Can Inform Ethical Debates in the Present’, March 2025, University of Oxford [Invited as moderator]
‘Is Eugenics Still With Us?’, conference on ‘History, Eugenics, and Human Enhancement: History, Eugenics, and Human Enhancement: How the Past Can Inform Ethical Debates in the Present’, March 2025, University of Oxford [Invited]
‘Pregnancy and Legal Personhood: Learning from Philosophy to Improve the Law’, Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference 2024, University of Bristol, September 2024
‘Prenatal Testing, the Concept of Disability, and Bonding’, invited speaker and panellist, in a panel on ‘The Future of the Concept of Disability in Biomedicine and Health Law’, organised by Professor Joel Michael Reynolds, at the International Academy of Law and Mental Health XXXVIIIth Congress in Barcelona, July 2024
‘Disability as a Starting Point, and the Law’s Philosophical Foundations’, Social Sciences Equality and Diversity Research Spotlight Event, Oxford Department of International Development, May 2024 [Invited]
Participation in workshop on ‘Conditional Consent in Transplantation Medicine: assessing the legal, ethical and clinical factors’, Pembroke College, Oxford, December 2023 [Invited]
Commentary on book Legal Capacity, Disability and Human Rights, for a book launch, Wadham College, Oxford, November 2023 [Invited]
‘Medical Provision of Information during Prenatal Testing: Disability, Autonomy, and the Challenge of Neutrality’, Oxford Bioethics Society, Oxford, November 2023 [Invited]
‘Disability Rights, Women’s Rights, and a New Right in the (Abortion) Rights Debate’, European Human Rights Law Conference 2023, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, September 2023
‘Justice in Pregnancy Requires More than Equality: A New Argument on Personhood for a Stronger Legal Response’, Workshop on Pregnancy and the Law, Stefan Cross Centre for Women, Equality & Law, University of Southampton Law School, September 2023
‘Pregnancy and Superior Moral Status: A Proposal for Two Thresholds of Personhood’, Institute of Medical Ethics, July 2023 [Invited]
‘The Law’s Messages about the Value of Disabled Lives: Reflections on a Recent Challenge to the Law on Abortion on the Grounds of Disability’ (co-presenter), Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference 2023, June 2023
‘Abortion on the Grounds of Disability, and Abortion on the Grounds of a Life-Limiting Condition: How Similar are the Ethical Considerations?’, Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Conference 2023, Ulster University, Northern Ireland, April 2023
‘Integrating Disability Issues into Law Teaching’, Wadham Cross-College Curriculum Diversity Workshop on Disability, Wadham College, Oxford, November 2022 [Invited]
Convenor of conference on ‘Prenatal Testing, Disability, and the Ethical Society: Reflections Following Crowter’, St Stephen’s House, University of Oxford, March 2022
‘Prenatal Testing, Disability Equality, and the Limits of the Law’, St Stephen’s House, University of Oxford, March 2022
‘Rethinking Ethical Parental Choice: State Neutrality in the Use of Certain Technologies Which Can End or Prevent the Lives of Disabled Human Beings’, European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics Annual Conference, organised by the Ethox Centre and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, September 2019
‘State Neutrality, Parental Choice, and Disability’, Healthcare Disparities: Disruptive Healthcare Technologies and the Patient, University of Manchester, June 2019
‘The Ethics of Ending the Lives of Disabled Human Beings Before Birth: What Does a Just Society Require?’ Canadian Bioethics Society Annual Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada), May 2018
‘A Neutral State? Medical Law and Ethics, Disability and Selecting Children’, Oxford Disability Law and Policy Conference, Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Mansfield College, University of Oxford, February 2018
