Samantha Halliday

Dr. Samantha Halliday is an Associate Professor in Biolaw at Durham Law School and Co-Director of the Durham CELLS (Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences) and the Institute for Medical Humanities. She has held academic positions across Europe, including roles at the Universities of Huddersfield, Leeds, Liverpool, Warwick, Swansea, and Aberystwyth. Her doctoral work at Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany, examined compelled obstetric intervention and received the Promotionspreis award for best legal thesis.

Education includes a Law with German Law and Language degree from the University of East Anglia and a doctorate from Justus-Liebig Universität Giessen. Her research focuses on comparative medical law and ethics at life's beginning/end, with particular attention to advance decision-making and maternal-fetal conflicts. She authored Autonomy and Pregnancy: A Comparative Analysis of Compelled Obstetric Intervention (Routledge, 2016), a seminal work in biomedical law.

Key grants include an ESRC Research Seminar Series on advance decision-making and DFG-funded projects on transnational criminal law harmonization. She serves on peer review boards for AHRC/ESRC and advises the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's end-of-life care committee. Fluent in English, German, French, and Dutch, she actively contributes to interdisciplinary dialogues on healthcare law and ethics.

Current projects include fostering a European research network on advance directives and analyzing cross-border challenges in criminal law limitation periods. Her work bridges legal, medical, and social science perspectives to address complex ethical dilemmas in healthcare.