Abbie joined the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine as a PhD Student in November 2021, following the completion of the first year of her studies at Keele University. Her research seeks to determine whether Access and Benefit Sharing approaches to vaccine distribution are capable of delivering global health justice during a pandemic and will be supervised by Dr Mark Eccleston-Turner and Professor Octavio Ferraz. She is a recipient of the NWCDTP +2 studentship, funded by the AHRC.

Abbie’s background is in Law and she holds a Bachelor of Laws and an MA in Human Rights, Globalisation and Justice from Keele University. During her time there, she was the recipient of a number of awards, including: The Oxford University Press Prize; The Maxwell Law Prize; and The Patrick Thornberry Prize (2020).

On completion of her MA and during the first year of her PhD, Abbie took on the role of research assistant for the following projects: ‘Tracking the transfer of pandemic influenza viruses’ (supported by Open Philanthropy) and ‘Towards a Welsh Health Law: Values, Governance and Devolution after COVID-19’ (supported by the Welsh Government’s Sêr Cymru programme).

Abbie’s research interests fall within the following categories:

• International law and infectious diseases
• Pathogen sharing and equitable access to vaccines
• Global health justice
• The securitisation of health
• Pandemic preparedness