Imogen Goold

EXPERIENCE & EXPERTISE

During her first six Imogen was supervised by Sebastian Naughton and Michael Walsh. She was exposed to a breadth of Chambers’ work including a jury inquest and the high-profile withdrawal of hydration case of GUP v EUP and UCLH NHS Foundation Trust [2024] EWCOP 3 in the Court of Protection.

As well as practising, Imogen is also Professor of Medical Law at the University of Oxford, where she has held an academic position since 2009. She is also a Fellow and Tutor of St Anne’s College, and a Member of the British Medical Association Medical Ethics Committee. She has previously advised the Ethics and Law Advisory Committee of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

She was Visiting Professor of Law at Gresham College from 2021 – 2023. During her time at Gresham, she gave lectures on topics ranging from euthanasia, egg freezing and vaccination. She has also held visiting fellowships at the Brocher Fondation in Geneva, Hong Kong University, the University of Melbourne and the University of British Columbia. She was an associate editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics from 2010 to 2013. Before going to Oxford, she was a Legal Officer at the Australian Law Reform Commission, and also interned at the World Health Organisation.

PUBLICATIONS

Imogen has published numerous scholarly papers and books in the field of medical law. These include:

• Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Young Children: A Comparative Perspective, (Hart Publishing, 2020) (co-edited with C Auckland and J Herring)
• Parental Rights, Best Interests and Significant Harms: Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Children Post-Great Ormond Street Hospital v Yates, (Hart Publishing, 2019) (co-edited with C Auckland and J Herring)
• “Time to start de Novo: the Paul, Purchase and Polmear litigation and the temporal gap problem in secondary victim claims for psychiatric injury” (2023) 39 Professional Negligence 24 (with Catherine Kelly)
• ‘Offsetting Damages in Wrongful Conception and Birth Cases: A Way Through the Post-McFarlane Mire’ (2022) (2022) 138 Law Quarterly Review 58 (with Cressida Auckland)
• ‘Who’s Afraid of Imaginary Claims? Common Misunderstandings of the Origin of the Action for Pure Psychiatric Injury in Negligence 1888–1943’ (2021) Law Quarterly Review (with Catherine Kelly)

Seminars, lectures and other speaking engagements

Imogen is regularly invited to give talks to medical professionals working in paediatrics, including the John Radcliffe Hospital, Leeds Teaching Hospital, Helen and Douglas House, and the Association for Paediatric Palliative Medicine. Imogen’s Gresham College lectures are available here.

She is also often consulted by the media as an expert. Recently, for example, she:

• Appeared as a guest on the BBC’s Briefing Room, talking about euthanasia (2024) – available here
• Was interviewed by the Times on her work on oocyte freezing (2024)
• Was interviewed by the BBC World Service on the Scottish assisted dying bill (2024)
• Was a guest on BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour (2022) – available here
• Was interviewed for a feature on Social Egg Freezing, Boots Magazine February 2021
• Organised and ran the MyBody, MyLife travelling exhibition, (2017) – available here
• Was interviewed by BBC: Digital Tracking Medicine, (14 November 2017) (broadcast on the World Service and Radio 4)

Further speaker appearances include:

• ‘Should parents have the final say on the medical treatment of their children?’, University of Stockholm, 2nd November 2020 (online)
• ‘Should parents have the final say on the medical treatment of their children?’, The Baron de Lancey Lecture, University of Cambridge, 8th March 2019 (available here)
• ‘Psychiatric Injury and the Hysterical Woman’ (with Catherine Kelly), Science, Medicine and Culture in the Nineteenth Century Seminar Series, University of Oxford, 23 October 2018
• Invited speaker, ‘Law and Ethics in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go’, Fiction and Human Rights Network, run by Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), 6th January 2017
• Invited speaker and panellist, Conference on Property in the Body, Hong Kong University, 6-7 April 2017.
• Invited panellist (with Kate Greasley, Angela Ballantyne and Naomi Wolf), Does the pro-choice movement ‘cultivate a hardness of heart’?, St Anne’s College, Oxford, 9th June 2016
• Invited panellist, ‘Beating the Biological Clock – Should You Freeze Your Eggs?’, University College
• ‘Must the Surgeon take the Pill? Negligence Duty in the Context of Cognitive Enhancement’, The Walter S Owen Lecture, Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, October 2013 London, October 2015 (organised by Progress Educational Trust)

Memberships & Appointments

• Member, Working Group of Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health on second opinions in decision-making for ill children (2021)
• Invited Advisor to Ethics and Law Committee, Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health on their response to the proposed ‘Charlie’s Law’ on decision-making for ill children (2020)

Qualifications

• 2005: PhD (Law), (Dean’s commendation award for an outstanding doctoral thesis), University of Tasmania
• 2005: MA (Bioethics), Distinction, Monash University
• 1992–1998: LLB, BA (Comb) (Modern History), First Class honours (Modern History) University of Tasmania

PRIZES, SCHOLARSHIPS & Awards

• British Academy/Leverhulme Grant, A Legal and Historical Analysis of the Action for Psychiatric Injury in English Law (1880-2020) (2019)
• Dean’s Commendation Award for an Outstanding Doctoral Thesis, University of Tasmania, 2006
• Wellcome Trust Prize Studentship in Biomedical Ethics, Wellcome Trust, 2004

Further Information

For further details of Imogen’s practice please click on the links to the left or contact a member of the clerking or client service team.

Registered Name: Imogen Louise Goold
Bar Council Membership No: 78652