Dr Zaina Mahmoud BA, LLB (Hons), LLM, PhD

Personal Statement

Zaina completed her B.A. at the University of Western Ontario (Canada), double majoring in medical sciences and psychology (2015). She relocated to the United Kingdom to undertake a Graduate LL.B. (2017), completing her dissertation examining the legal requirement of consideration for contract formation in light of the proposed EU Directive on Certain Aspects Concerning Contracts for the Supply of Digital Content. She then pursued an LL.M. in Intellectual Property Law, with her dissertation providing a comparative legal analysis into European and American morality concerns within the biotechnological patent regimes as related to the use of CRISPR-Cas 9 in human germline genetic engineering. She completed her Wellcome Trust-funded Ph.D. at the Wellcome Centre of Cultures and Environments of Health, University of Exeter (2023). Her thesis encompassed empirical socio-legal research, developing an alternative legal framework of surrogacy regulation informed by a comparative examination of surrogates’ lived experiences in Britain and California.

Prior to joining the School of Law and Social Justice, Zaina worked as a research associate at a fertility clinic, a novel role created to foster and develop industry-based socio-legal research; her work focused on trends and outcomes in relation to egg donation and elective egg freezing. She also held a socio-legal research fellowship on the Wellcome Trust funded project 'Everyday Cyborgs 2.0: Law’s Boundary Work and Alternative Legal Futures' at the University of Birmingham.