معرفی
Dr. Emily Postan serves as Senior Lecturer and Chancellor's Fellow in Bioethics at the University of Edinburgh's Edinburgh Law School, where she also holds the position of Deputy Director of the Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law with lead responsibility for policy engagement. Her academic leadership extends to Director of Postgraduate Academic Guidance within the Law School.
Her educational background includes a PhD from the University of Edinburgh (2017), LLM (Distinction), MA(Hons), and MLitt by research in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh and University of Stirling. Prior to her academic career, she spent a decade in policy management at the Scottish Government.
Postan's research centers on the intersection of biomedical technologies, personal information, and identity formation, with particular focus on how health informatics shapes our self-conception. Her work critically examines ethical governance frameworks for bioinformation, emphasizing the narrative dimensions of identity. She explores how AI-driven health data classification impacts belonging and social categorization, particularly through her current project 'Identity by Algorithm: Ethical Impacts of Categorisation by Health AI'.
Her scholarly output reveals consistent engagement with neuroethics, genomic regulation, and AI ethics, with publications spanning from foundational identity theory to practical policy recommendations. The trajectory shows increasing focus on algorithmic governance in healthcare, culminating in the 2025 international consensus paper on AI trust frameworks.
- 2018 Rising Star lecture at International Neuroethics Society Annual Meeting
- Project leadership for Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ 2013 Novel Neurotechnologies report
- Key contributions to Scottish policy through Mason Institute submissions on organ donation, human tissue legislation, and Adults with Incapacity Act reforms
As a doctoral supervisor, she mentors researchers in bioethics and medical law, currently guiding Gokce Kolukisa's work on 'Genome Editing in International Law'. Her Wellcome Trust-funded project 'Confronting the Liminal Spaces of Health Research Regulation' (2017-2021) established her as a leading voice in health research governance. Postan actively engages with media and policymakers on bioethics issues, bridging academic research and real-world application through the Mason Institute's policy portfolio.
