Dr Matthew Watkins - Bournemouth University Staff Profile Pages

Biography
Research

Biography

Dr Matthew Watkins was appointed as a lecturer in Healthcare and Family Law at Bournemouth University in 2023. Prior to this Matthew was awarded a ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in Socio-Legal Studies at Cardiff University.

Matthew has an extensive research background in both health law and bioethics. He completed his PhD in 2022, on medical decision-making in relation to informed consent, and is currently converting this to a Monography, to be released in 2025. Matthew has since worked on a number of major socio-legal projects. Between 2019-2022, Matthew acted as a research assistant on the AHRC funded project, Judging Values and Participation in Mental Capacity Law (ICPR, Birkbeck), as a postdoctoral research associate on the Ser Cymru/Welsh Government Health Law in Wales Project (2021) and the BU/Leverhulme funded Legal Transplants and Policy Transfers Project: Legislating for a Devolved UK. Matthew has published widely in several top journals, both independently and collaboratively – most recently in the Modern Law Review, with his paper entitled “The Connection-Friction Axis in Devolved Health Policy and Law-Making in the UK: A Case-Study of Organ Donation.”...

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Research

Matthew’s research spans the spectrum of health law and bioethics. He is an expert in the law relating to information disclosure, and informed consent, and is currently completing his Monograph on the socio-legal impact of law on medical decision-making (to be published in 2025). Matthew also actively researches and publishes in the area of mental capacity, best interests, participation, organ donation, Gillick competence, and death and dying. Through his research he also developed particular expertise in Health Law in Wales, and in comparative devolved law. Matthew is currently working on several projects including:

1. HEAL: Health Law and Ethics for Post-Primary School Education (with Professor John Harrington and Dr Barbara Hughes-Moore at Cardiff University).

2. One (em)body, why not everybody: the need to recognise collective embodiment in medical ethics and law (with Dr Sam Walker & Karolina Szopa, Bournemouth University)

3. The History of Sex, Marriage and Mental Capacity: A gendered (re)construction (with Dr Julie Rocheton, Max Plank Institute)

4. Mental Capacity Act at 20 (with Dr Jordan Parsons (Birmingham Medical School), Dr Bonnie Venter (University of Bristol), Dr Ruby Reed-Berendt (University of Edinburgh)

Matthew has supported numerous students to completition in their LLB Legal Research Projects, and several students to completion through LLM Dissertations, as Module Lead. Matthew currently co-supervises one PhD student, Joseph McMullen, in his thesis entitled: "Particulate Matter: Regulating an Invisible Killer."...

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Journal Articles

Watkins, M., 2024. The purpose of information disclosure before and after the Covid-19 pandemic: a medical relationship in flux. Contemporary Issues in Law, 1-47.
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Reed-Berendt, R., Farrell, A.-M., Watkins, M. and Harrington, J., 2024. The Connection-Friction Axis in Devolved Health Policy and Law-Making in the UK: A Case Study of Organ Donation. MODERN LAW REVIEW, 87 (6), 1542-1571.
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Watkins, M., Penny, C. and Rebecca, S., 2023. Participation in the Court of Protection: A Search for Purpose. International Journal of Mental Health and Capacity Law.
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Watkins, M.J.B., 2022. Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust V AB [2020] EWCOP 40-Mental Capacity and the Anorexic Patient in the Court of Protection: Understanding Values, Framing Matters and Specification of the Declaration. Med Law Rev, 30 (2), 364-379.
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Kong, C., Stickler, R., Cooper, P., Watkins, M. and Dunn, M., 2022. The 'human element' in the social space of the courtroom: framing and shaping the deliberative process in mental capacity law. LEGAL STUDIES.
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Kong, C., Stickler, R., Cooper, P., Watkins, M. and Dunn, M., 2022. Justifying and practising effective participation in the Court of Protection: an empirical study. JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, 49 (4), 703-725.
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Conferences

Watkins, M., 2024. "One for all and all for one: how has the law of medical negligence attempted to regulate medical decision-making in informed consent?". In: Postgraduate Bioethics Conference 2017 23 June 2017-24 June 2024 Oxford University.
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Harrington, J., Watkins, M., Ruby, R.-B. and Farrell, A.-M., 2024. Territorializing Values? The Gift Relationship in a Devolved UK. In: Socio-Legal Studies Association 2024 26 March-28 June 2024 Portsmouth.
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Watkins, M. and Samuel, W., 2024. One (em)body, why not everybody: the need to recognise collective embodiment in the context of health. In: Socio-Legal Studies Association 6-8 April 2022 University of York.
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Watkins, M., Harrington, J., Farrell, A.-M. and Reed-Berendt, R., 2023. Legal Transplants and Policy Transfers Workshop. In: Legal Transplants and Policy Transfers Workshop 15 September 2023 SPARK, Cardiff University.
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Watkins, M., 2023. Health Law in Wales: Teaching Values, Ethics and Law. In: Social Research Lecture Series 6 March 2023 Cardiff University.
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Watkins, M. and John, H., 2022. Beyond Demoralisation: Grounding Medical Law in Social Practice and Tradition. In: Society of Legal Scholars 6-8 September 2022 Kings College, London.
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Watkins, M., John, H., Ruby, R.-B. and Ann-Maree, F., 2022. Legal Transplantations: Exploring the Development of Organ Donation between devolved governments in the UK. In: Socio-Legal Studies Association 6-8 April 2022 University of York.
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Watkins, M., 2021. ’Confusing the purpose of the medical relationship in Law: a return to beneficence-in-trust as the basis of Medicine. In: Institute of Medical Ethics Online Seminar 10 November 2021 Online. https://ime-uk.org/events-and-news/news/online-seminar-josh-parker-matthew-watkins-video-recording/.
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Watkins, M., Stickler, R., Camillia, K., John, C., Cooper, P. and Dunn, M., 2021. Section 4 in Practice: Best, substitutes or a 'subtly blended perspective?'. In: Society of Legal Scholars 30 March-2 April 2021 Durham University. https://www.slsa.ac.uk/images/conferences/Cardiff_2021_FINAL.pdf.
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Watkins, M., 2021. The missing voice in the Court of Protection: 3-Dimensions of Participation in Health and Welfare Cases. In: Society of Legal Scholars 1-4 September 2021 Durham University.
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Watkins, M. and Stickler, R., 2021. Best Interests beyond the law: unwritten judicial decision-making in the time of Covid-19. In: Mental Diversity Law Network Conference 1 June 2021 Online.
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Watkins, M., 2019. Consent to organ donation in Wales: Unjustified Intergenerational Inequality? In: Postgraduate Bioethics Conference 2019 30 October 2019 Swansea University.
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Watkins, M., 2019. "The evolution of the doctor-patient relationship in the law of consent: can Montgomery's bigamous relationship work?". In: HEAL Research Group Seminar Series 24 April 2019 University of Southampton.
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Watkins, M., 2019. Rationalising the Autonomy in Montgomery: clarifying the legal standard of care in information disclosure. In: Society of Legal Scholars 3-5 April 2019 Leed University.
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Watkins, M., 2018. Putting the "Informed" in Informed Consent. In: Invited Lecture at Winchester University 3 December 2018 Winchester University.
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Biggs, H., Matthew, W., Katie, H. and Watkins, M., 2017. Planning Ahead: LGBT issues at the end of life. In: University of Southampton PULSE Network 26 April 2017 University of Southampton.
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Theses

Watkins, M., 2024. How do doctor doctors make decisions about information disclosure? A moral diagnosis. PhD Thesis. University of Southampton.
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Posters

Watkins, M., 2018. A model of medical decision-making for information disclosure: a bioethical foundation in Autonomy. In: SLSA 2018.
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Others

Watkins, M. and Harrington, J., 2021. The growing need to recognise distinct health values as a basis for 'Welsh' Health Law. Public Law Wales: Public Law Wales. Published online.
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PhD Students
Invited Lectures

PhD Students

Joseph McMullen. Particulate Matter: Regulating an Invisible Killer, (In progress)

Invited Lectures

Confusing the purpose of the medical relationship, IME, London (Online), 10 Nov 2021 more

It is nearly 20 years since O’Neil published Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics. This seminal book exposed the relationship between the reduction in public trust and the dramatic increase in both ethical and legal regulation of medical decision-making. However, rather than fill the void with a coherent set of beneficent principles, certain members of the judiciary have embarked on a campaign to shift the power in the medical relationship to the patient. Adopting the mantra: the patient rather than the doctor must decide. This paper will argue that the development of Negligence case-law has led to the piecemeal eradication of medical discretion. Worse, the Law has re-characterised doctor-patient relationship: from one grounded on moral principles, to one based on servicing the patient consumer. Not only is this alien to the British conception of medicine, it is damaging to both the patient and the doctor. First, it legitimises abandoning the inexpert, and vulnerable, patient to complex and potentially harmful decision-making. Second, it divorces the doctor from the moral basis, principles and virtues, which require them to care for the patient in the act of medicine. Without this moral basis to guide her actions, a doctor can only act by following rules to avoid sanction. If these rules are decided by the patient, there is every possibility that the doctor will forced to do harm. When harm occurs the cycle of regulation continues. Adopting the scholarship of Thomasma and Pellegrino, this paper advocates that only when the patient, and society at large, can trust that all doctors are acting upon shared moral principles will this cycle end. The the first step is a collective conception of the purpose of medicine: as Beneficence-in-trust.
The growing need to recognise distinct Welsh healt, Cardiff University (Online), 24 Sep 2021 more

Health, and especially public health, is a hugely important issue in Wales; socially, economically and politically. The 2020-2021 budget saw spending on Health and Social Services makes up around 8-9% of the annual budget, and this is estimated to grow by 5.2% (in nominal terms to £419m) during next year, with additional funds being allocated in light of Covid-19. Despite this significant spending the people of Wales continue to suffer from a legacy of industrial related disease, poor health and illness resulting from poverty and social deprivation. Despite Wales’s unique health and social need, the Westminster government have long continued to adopt universal health policy and facilitative laws, which are designed around a British model of the NHS. By British, we mean a model that is usually tailored to ‘English’ rather than ‘Welsh’ health needs and values. This policy, particularly during the Thatcher, and New Labour years, focused on values which promoted the maximisation of consumer choice, liberalism and breaking up of services, to create competition and markets of medicine. These values of the liberal model of health, have percolated into common law through various judgements (particularly in the law relating to mental capacity, best interests and consent) within the common law of England and Wales. Autonomy and the rhetoric of patient rights have been cast as ethical trump cards and been adopted in consolidatory pieces of legislation – again flowing from Westminster, with little devolved consultation. Thus, the cycle of English value-colonisation has continued. Recently legal and bioethical commentators have rightly criticised this ethical model of medicine, and its manifestation in law, as lacking empirical reflexivity, abstracting law and ethics from the systems and context in which medicine operates, and demoralising medicine – causing doctors to act formalistically – rather than in the interests of their actual patients. These problems of top-down systems of law and policy have been exacerbated in the Welsh context due to the sparse demography, linear infrastructure, diverse health needs, and perceived role of health in society. The patient has been recast as an autonomous consumer, holding rights, and entitled to a smorgasbord of treatments; the doctor simply became a provider of medical services. These liberal values stand in sharp relief to the more traditional values of Welsh healthcare, which prioritised: communitarian approaches to health (where services were designed to facilitate close-knit Welsh communities) and the values of solidarity and egalitarianism; exemplified through the creation of organisations such as the Tredegar Workmen’s Medical Aid Society (which acted as the inspiration for the modern NHS). This paper argues that it has long been recognised that health law and policy must instead be tailored to the unique dynamic of the Welsh patient, the NHS in Wales, and Welsh health values. Relying on MacIntyre, these authors suggest that these values can be delineated through a combination of historicism (i.e. through investigation and analysis of the culture and tradition of Welsh health care) and empiricism (i.e. by sociological investigation into the internal morality of medicine, how the Welsh NHS functions, and the values that influence decisions in practice). From analysis of policy, culture and law, this paper posits four potential Welsh values: (1) Deliberation, (2) Solidarity (3) Equality, and (4) Sustainability. These values have already manifest within health policy and law after the GOWA 1998 e.g. through the creation of Community Health Councils, the reformation of infrastructure, and discreet pieces of law. However, the movement to Schedule 7, GOWA 2006, and the devolution of primary law-making powers, in combination the adoption of a reserved power, in the Wales Act 2017, now for the first time, provides the Government of Wales the legislative competence to fashion a health system t
Getting Informed about Informed Consent, Winchester University, 01 Dec 2017 more

Getting informed about Informed Consent
Planning Ahead: LGBT issues at end of life, PULSE LGBT Network, 01 Nov 2017 more

Planning Ahead: LGBT issues at end of life

Grants

Grants

Everyday Law and Ethics Summer Lecture Series (PER Seed Funding, 21 May 2024). Awarded
Law, Ethics and Medical Decision-making for Information Disclosure Project (Economic and Social Research Council, 01 Oct 2022). Completed

Public Engagement & Outreach Activities

Public Engagement & Outreach Activities

Everyday Law and Ethics Public Lecture Series (21 May 2024)

Qualifications
Networks

Qualifications

Fellow High Education Authority (FHEA) in Teaching (Higher Education Authority, 2023)

Networks

BU Law Research Network (Chair)