Laura Downey

Laura is a Research Fellow at Birmingham Law School, working on the Wellcome Trust-funded project Everyday Cyborgs 2.0 project. Her research explores how legal categories struggle to accommodate emerging biomedical technologies, particularly implanted smart and medical devices. She is also involved in PsychLES (Psychedelics: Law, Ethics, and Society), contributing to interdisciplinary work on the legal and ethical dimensions of psychedelic research and regulation. Her work includes research on the legal and regulatory dimensions of using psilocybin in palliative care and broader questions of psychedelic governance. She joined the University of Birmingham in 2020 after completing her PhD in Law at the University of Edinburgh, where she taught Medical Jurisprudence at Honours and Master’s levels. She has also served as Managing Editor and Editor-in-Chief of SCRIPTed, a journal of law, technology, and society.