John Coggon, Professor of Law at the University of Bristol tells us about his career so far and how he chose a pathway in public health research.
Can you tell us about your professional background and what made decide to choose a pathway in public health research?
I am an academic lawyer with research interests that sit practically at the intersections of law, policy, and health. I employ methods primarily from within law and moral, legal, and political philosophy (in collaboration I have been involved in various empirically-driven research projects, but I am a theorist).
I moved into public health research because of an overbearing interest in the questions of political, legal, and other forms of power, and the interplay between these and questions of responsibility for health, and health-affecting phenomena (e.g., the social determinants of health). The analytical and practical terrains are much broader, more interesting, and less explored than those of ‘traditional’ medical/health care law and ethics.
Following my PhD, I was awarded a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship for a three-year project, undertaken at the University of Manchester, entitled Making Laws on Public Health: Regulation of Responsibilities and Freedoms. This led to various outputs, including my book What Makes Health Public? (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Following that fellowship, I held a further research position in Manchester before being appointed in 2012 to Reader in Law, and then in 2014 Professor of Law and the Philosophy of Public Health, at the University of Southampton. I moved to the University of Bristol Law School in 2016, where I became a founding member and co-director of the Centre for Health, Law, and Society. I have a wide research and teaching profile in public health law and philosophy (including but not limited to philosophical ethics). I have Honorary Membership of the UK Faculty of Public Health (FPH) (the UK’s standard-setting body for the public health workforce). I have led on ethics and law training with the UK’s public health workforce, and worked with organisations including FPH and Public Health England, as well as colleagues from multiple disciplines within public health’s broad embrace.
What do you like about working in public health research?
I enjoy the theoretical aspects, which go to the core of political theory. And I like that these come in combination with learning from a very broad range of disciplinary and critical perspectives, engaging ideas from across sectors and communities, and finding application in multiple, profoundly important ways.
I also enjoy the collegiality and goal-oriented nature of public health research. It has been rewarding to see the growing inclusion of disciplines including my own (law and philosophy), as well as others from the humanities and social sciences.
What particular skills have you gained from your background discipline that you have been able to bring public health research?
I find in particular the skills that have been most useful are:
- fundamental skills in understanding the meanings and effects of laws and legal regulation, both in formal and substantive senses, and their relationship to wider forms of regulation/coordination;
- relatedly, developing understandings of different sources of normativity, power, effect, and effectiveness (e.g., regarding the authority and responsibility both of public actors such as legislators, judges, and government agencies, and of private actors such as commercial organisations, as well as non-governmental organisations, community groups, charitable bodies, professional/expert organisations, etc.);
- specific skills, in particular relating to practical reasoning, and to critical and conceptual methods of analysis, which both sharpen understanding and allow more refined reflection on the viability and justifiability of different sorts of intervention (including as regards overarching methods of legal understanding, such as by reference to the rule of law, human rights obligations);
- relating public health goals (e.g., protecting and promoting health, reducing avoidable health inequalities) to philosophical understandings of social justice;
- combining my skills and understanding with those of colleagues in research and practice, and serving (sometimes as a critical friend) aims to develop and implement better research, policy, and practice for the public’s health.
What has been the highlight of your career to date?
Academically, I’ve been very pleased to develop a wide portfolio of work that has been well received both within and beyond my core discipline. This includes a monograph, a co-authored textbook, numerous edited collections (books and journal special issues), peer-reviewed articles in journals from across different fields, and contributions in public lectures, international conferences, and through public and professional engagement exercises.
In addition, it has been rewarding, particularly through my work with the UK Faculty of Public Health, to make a difference to practice; to engage, constructively to challenge, and to collaborate with colleagues who share the aim of achieving a better, fairer society.
What advice would you give to someone who is considering stepping into public health research not currently working in a public health discipline?
- be led by your interest, and have confidence in your expertise and the important insights it can bring: do this with an awareness of what may be missing if you are not included;
- don’t be afraid, constructively, to challenge and explore received wisdoms and understandings – it is productive, and helps to underpin the rigour of the bases on which profoundly important and consequential decisions are made;
- see yourself, and your work, as part of a wide, inclusive, and ongoing system of developing knowledge and understanding. Whether you identify or not as ‘a public health researcher’, you have much both to give and to learn – public health is an extremely broad-reaching arena.