Professor Erin Nelson has been appointed the Katz Group Chair in Health Law for a three-year term that begins July 1.
Nelson is currently completing a project on transparency and accountability in Alberta's Mental Health Review Panel Process. She is also a co-applicant on a multi-year, interdisciplinary SSHRC research grant entitled "Surrogates' Voices: Exploring Surrogates' Experiences and Insights." This project will be the first large-scale study of the experiences of surrogates in Canada.
Her broader research interests focus on health care, ethics, law, and policy. She has published on a wide variety of topics in health law and policy, including consent, the regulation of health care practitioners, intervention in pregnancy, pediatric genetics and the tort law duties of pregnant women.
Nelson's monograph, Law, Policy and Reproductive Autonomy (Hart, 2013), investigates the meaning and implications of reproductive autonomy in relation to several issues, including surrogacy, assisted reproduction, abortion and tort claims for wrongful birth and wrongful conception. Her recent book, Law for Healthcare Providers (LexisNexis, 2018, co-authored with Professor Ubaka Ogbogu), is written for an interdisciplinary audience seeking to understand the legal considerations relevant to their work in health care.
An alumna of the University of Alberta Faculty of Law, Nelson obtained her LLB there in 1995, and her LLM and JSD from Columbia University.
Nelson has been a member of the Faculty of Law since 2000 and was its Associate Dean (Research) for two years. In 2012-2013, she served as senior legal counsel to the Honourable Catherine Fraser, Chief Justice of Alberta.
The Katz Group Chair in Health Law was established from part of a $7 million donation that the Edmonton-based Katz Group Canada Ltd. made to the University of Alberta in 2006.
Nelson's appointment occurs in a month when UAlberta Law's powerhouse group of health scholars have been showered with recognition, locally and nationally.
Professor Ubaka Ogbogu, an authority on biotechnologies and ethics, became a fellow of the prestigious Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation in early April.
The same week, Professor Timothy Caulfield, research director of the Health Law Institute was named to the Royal Society of Canada's Task Force on COVID-19 in order to support Canada's response to and recovery from COVID-19. Prior to that, he was awarded $380,000 from Alberta Innovates and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to track and help counter misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19.