School of Law & Criminology, & ALL Institute Postdoctoral Researcher (PatentsInHumans Project)

(Specified Purpose Contract)

Overview of the ERC PatentsInHumans project: PatentsInHumans is a 5-year European Research Council Starting Grant funded project led by Principal Investigator, Professor Aisling McMahon. The rapid pace of scientific developments has led to significant advances in health-technologies, such as medicines, vaccines, and medical devices which are often patentable or have patentable elements. How patents are used over such technologies can impact how we treat, use and modify the body, with knock-on bioethical implications. PatentsInHumans (www.patentsinhumans.eu) aims to develop a deeper understanding of such bioethical implications, and how they are, or could be better, engaged with by relevant decision-making systems in Europe.

The Role

As part of this project, we are seeking to appoint a Postdoctoral Researcher which excellent empirical/participant research skills to explore complex and important empirical questions at the interface of health innovation, bioethics and patent law. The candidate will work primarily on the empirical strand of the project, and for this role, we are looking to appoint a candidate with a background in using empirical methods and analysis, such as semi-structured interviews and/or focus groups.

It is desirable that the successful candidate has relevant knowledge of, at least one area related to the project, such as, bioethics, an area of law related to the project, for example, health law, human rights, or intellectual property law, or broader areas considered by the project, including institutional influences on decision-making, theories of governance etc.

The successful candidate will work with Prof Aisling McMahon (Principal Investigator) on the empirical strand of the project. They will work with the PI to conduct semi-structured interviews and focus groups with relevant experts and stakeholders to gain qualitative understandings of the potential bioethical implications posed by patents over such technologies and to develop deeper understandings of any challenges to engaging with these under the current decision-making systems in Europe. 

The Postdoctoral Researcher will join a dynamic, well-supported multidisciplinary team within the research-intensive School of Law and Criminology in Maynooth University. They will be supported in their personal career development plan throughout the project by Professor McMahon.

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101042147.

The ideal candidate will have:

Essential

• A PhD in law, or a PhD in a related discipline such as political sciences, bioethics, criminology, anthropology or sociology;
• An undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline, such as law, political science, bioethics, sociology, criminology, with a minimum 2.1 grade or higher;
• Knowledge and demonstratable experience of conducting empirical research and analysis, including for example semi-structured interviews or focus groups;
• Excellent research skills;
• A record of scholarly work/publications appropriate to career stage;
• Willingness to undertake travel in Europe for research purposes;
• Excellent writing and presentation skills in English.
• Excellent attention to detail, flexibility, initiative and good problem-solving abilities.
• Ability to work with a great degree of autonomy, manage workloads, deadlines, and responsibilities.
• Excellent computer skills, including proficiency in NVivo or comparable software, Word, Powerpoint, Adobe Acrobat;
• Excellent interpersonal, teamwork and communication skills.

For further details including full comprehensive job description please see reference number 034081 on the Maynooth University vacancies page at: www.maynoothuniversity.ie/human-resources/vacancies

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