Rate My Professor Catherine Kelly

Professor Catherine Kelly serves as Professor of Law and History and Head of the University of Bristol Law School, a role she took up on 1 August 2023. She joined the University of Bristol Law School in 2016 after working at the University of Western Australia, the Australian Medical Association, the University of Oxford, and the law firm Freehills in Sydney. Prior to becoming Head of School, she held positions as School Education Director, Undergraduate Director, and Director of Education within the Law School. Kelly earned her BA/LLB (Hons) from the Australian National University, MSc from the University of Oxford, and DPhil from the University of Oxford. Her academic career reflects a blend of legal practice, policy work in medical associations, and historical research on law's intersections with professional regulation.

Kelly's research examines the ways in which laws relating to medicine and scientific innovation were made, applied, and changed, with a focus on law's interaction with science and medicine in historical and contemporary contexts, including the history and regulation of the professions. She leads projects such as Colonial Innovation and History of Psychiatric Injury in Tort. Her key publications include 'Parliamentary Rewards and the Evolution of the Patent System' co-authored with Robert Burrell (2015), 'Myths of the Medical Methods Exclusion: Medicine and Patents in Nineteenth-Century Britain' co-authored with Robert Burrell (2018), 'The Legal Duty of Candour in Healthcare: The Lessons of History?' co-authored with Oliver Quick (2019), and 'Time to Cut Ties: Reforming the Secondary Victim Control Mechanism in Psychiatric Injury Cases' co-authored with Imogen Goold (2024). She co-edited Lawyers' Medicine: The Legislature, the Courts and Medical Practice, 1760-2000 with Imogen Goold. Kelly's contributions to historical scholarship earned her election as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2024 and as a Governor on the Board of the International Association of Law Schools in 2025. Under her leadership, the Law School has forged international partnerships, including memoranda of understanding with Cardozo School of Law and Western University Faculty of Law.