Bobbie Farsides

Bobbie joined Brighton and Sussex Medical School as Professor of Clinical and Biomedical Ethics in 2006. She had previously held posts at the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics, King’s College London (Lecturer/Senior Lecturer 1996-2006) and the Department of Philosophy, Keele University (Lecturer 1986-96). She is a graduate of the London School of Economics (B.Sc Econ Government) where she also studied for her PhD under the late Professor Sir Maurice Cranston.

Professor Farsides has been involved in developing the academic field of Bioethics for over thirty years. Whilst at Keele she was part of the team that established innovative master’s programmes which continue to this day, and whilst at King’s she was part of the team delivering their highly successful MA in Medical Law and Ethics. As the Ethics team has grown at BSMS the opportunity arose to develop a new postgraduate offering and in 2021 BSMS will be launching its MA in Contemporary Bioethics.

Since joining BSMS Professor Farsides has been able to expand her activities in relation to global health issues and she is an active member of the Global Health Bioethics Network. She has supervised doctoral projects in The Gambia, Ethiopia and now in China, and has strong links to the ethics and public engagement teams in all the Wellcome Trust Major Overseas project sites.

As a long-standing member of faculty Professor Farsides sees an important part of her role as offering mentorship and support to junior colleagues, and she is an enthusiastic and committed mentor to a number of colleagues within BSMS, partner universities and beyond. She was Deputy Chair of the BSMS Research Ethics and Governance committee for ten years and served as Deputy Director, and then Director of Student Support.