Dr. Maureen O’Sullivan (Bio)

Dr. Maureen O’Sullivan is a lecturer in law (Above the Bar) at the University of Galway. She has introduced the first course on Animal Law at a Law School in Ireland, commencing in January 2025. She is editing a textbook to accompany the course. Non-students of the University can register for this course as occasional students.

Maureen completed a certificate with the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in 2022 and has been a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics since 2014. She is Chair of the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Galway. She has supervised four PhDs to completion, one of those in animal protection law and another in human dignity in biotechnological patent law.

She was Chair of the Vegetarian Society of Ireland from 2013-2019. She is the Irish correspondent of the UK Vegan Society’s International Rights Network. She holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh entitled “Morality Patently Matters: The Case for a Universal Suffrage for Morally Controversial Biotechnological Patents”. This was published as a monograph with Routledge in 2019 and is entitled “Biotechnology, Patents and Morality: A Deliberative and Participatory Paradigm for Reform”.

She holds a Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from UWE in Bristol, an LLM thesis from the University of Warwick and a BCL and BA (Philosophy and English) from UCC. She has published widely on intellectual property, property law and themes related to animal law, ethics, vegetarianism and veganism.

She can be contacted at maureen.osullivan@universityofgalway.ie.