Dr Jennifer Dvorak

I am Associate Dean for Research, Enterprise and Knowledge Mobilisation (Capacity) in the School of Business, Law and Policing, with responsibility for developing research cultures, enhancing the postgraduate research student experience, and recognising and nurturing research, enterprise and knowledge-mobilisation talent across the School.  I am also a socio-legal scholar in health law and bioethics, whose research is theoretically grounded in feminist relational ethics and biopolitics. My work examines governance, vulnerability, and best interests in contested domains, including assisted dying, end-of-life decision-making, sport and healthcare regulation, through socio-legal and interdisciplinary methods to critically interrogate practice. 

Research areas of expertise 

• Health law and bioethics (socio-legal)
• Feminist relational ethics, biopolitics, and political philosophy
• Governance, vulnerability, and decision-making in health and bodily regulation
• Assisted dying, end-of-life law, and healthcare regulation
• Risk, harm, and responsibility across health and sport
• Interdisciplinary socio-legal methods drawing on socio-legal case law analysis, comparative models, historical and genealogical analysis, and qualitative research

Awards and recognition

• Health Law, Jotwell (The Journal of Things We Like Lots). My article ‘Is Assisted Dying Really a Matter for Medical Regulation?’ was identified as one of the best works of recent scholarship relating to health law by reviewer, Professor Trudo Lemmens.
• Theoretical Criminology’s Best Article Prize for 'Governing Excess: Boxing, Biopolitics and the Body'. Awarded to articles that advance critical inquiry in the field of theoretical criminology. Qualities sought include clarity of writing, breadth of ambition and original inquiry.
• Canadian Sociological Association Award for Outstanding Graduating Doctoral Student.
• North American Society of the Sociology of Sport Awards for Doctoral and Masters work.
• British Olympic Foundation Award for Academic Excellence.

My teaching is research-led and interdisciplinary, aligned with my scholarship in health law and socio-legal studies. I teach medical law at undergraduate level and have extensive experience chairing and supervising PhD candidates across law, sociology, criminology, and interdisciplinary research areas. I have designed, led, and contributed to modules across law, sociology, sport, criminology, and interdisciplinary programmes, including medical law and the medical-law dimensions of tort law; law and society; and law, criminology and sociology-based independent study. I have also developed interdisciplinary modules such as ‘crime, power and the state’, sport sociology, and ethics in sport, and designed the university-wide interdisciplinary module ‘who owns my body?’ 

A further core strand of my teaching is research methods education. I have integrated quantitative and qualitative approaches and use community-engaged projects with external partners, including the Kent Refugee Action Network (KRAN), to enable students to develop robust research skills through socially significant and impactful work.

I am co-author of two student-facing textbooks published by HarperCollins - How to Be a Sociologist and How to Be a Social Researcher - reflecting my commitment to accessible, interdisciplinary teaching. 

My research sits at the intersection of health law, bioethics and socio-legal studies, with a focus on how law and ethics govern vulnerability, risk, and contested decision-making. Drawing on feminist relational ethics, biopolitics and political philosophy, I use theory as a critical tool to analyse how legal and ethical frameworks are shaped by social, historical and institutional contexts, and how they operate in regulatory practice, professional judgement, and lived experience. 

Across my work is a unifying concern with the critical examination of concepts such as personhood, autonomy, vulnerability, best interests, responsibility, consent and harm. I have developed these analyses across domains including assisted dying, end of life decision making, assisted reproduction, healthcare regulation and the governance of risk in sport. I interrogate how norms, categories and regulatory models are produced and stabilised, how they structure power, care and accountability, and how they are contested, both in practice and in theory.

I am interdisciplinary in orientation and methodologically plural with a sustained engagement with law as a socially situated, enacting and governing mechanism, operating through norms, discourses and institutions, such as medicine and policing. Combining socio-legal case law analysis with qualitative, comparative and historical approaches, I work collaboratively with clinicians and scholars across disciplines.

Research themes:

• Health law and bioethics (socio-legal)
• Assisted dying and end-of-life decision-making
• Governance, vulnerability, and biopolitics
• Risk, harm, and responsibility in health and sport
• Interdisciplinary socio-legal methods