Staff Profile

Dr Michael Ashworth joined Newcastle Law School in August 2023 as a Lecturer in Public Law. His expertise lies in medical regulation, with a primary emphasis on socio-legal, theoretically-informed approaches to analysing regulatory dilemmas. He received his PhD from the University of Bristol Law School in 2019, which was funded through an Economic and Social Research Council 3 + 1 studentship, including an MSc in Socio-Legal Studies. He has previously studied at University College London and the University of Sussex.

Michael has teaching experience in the fields of public law, medical law, and socio-legal studies. At Newcastle Law School, he has taught Administrative Law & Human Rights, and Medical Law and Bioethics.

Before joining Newcastle Law School, Michael worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate on a Wellcome Trust project (Investigator Award, 2017-2023) at Kent Law School, entitled “Law, knowledges and the making of ‘modern healthcare'”, led by Professor Emilie Cloatre. Outside of academia, Michael has worked with the Human Dignity Trust (London), the United National Development Programme (Belmopan), and the British High Commission Belize.

RESEARCH AREAS

• Medical regulation.
• Medical pluralism.
• Global health.
• Media, governance, and health.
• Governmentality studies.
• Socio-legal methodologies and methods.

Michael's current research interest lies in interrogating regulatory dilemmas and tensions surrounding medical pluralism. In particular, he is interested in exploring state and non-state regulatory techniques as applied to traditional, complementary and alternative medicine in European, African and global contexts.

DOCTORAL SUPERVISION

Michael is happy to discuss potential doctoral supervision on any area of medical pluralism.

For 2024/25, Michael will teach:

• Constitutional Law
• Administrative Law & Human Rights
• Medical Law & Bioethics