Rate My Professor Annelize McKay

Professor Annelize McKay serves as Professor of International Law and Bioethics and Head of the Division of Law within the Dundee Business School at the University of Abertay Dundee, part of the Faculty of Design, Informatics and Business. She holds a BA Honours in English Literature and Literary Theory, LLB Honours, LLM cum laude, Diploma in Datametrics, and LLD (PhD). Prior to academia, she practiced as an advocate and currently holds the position of Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Public Law at the University of Pretoria. She teaches Medical Law and Bioethics as well as Public International Law at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Her research interests center on international human rights law, medical law and ethics, bioethics, sexual and reproductive health, and public international law, with particular emphasis on the regulation of health data sharing in Africa, data governance during sub-Saharan African public health emergencies, legal protections for mobility and location data in South African healthcare, comorbidities such as HIV and tuberculosis during the COVID-19 pandemic, and safeguards for participants in health research including South African Material Transfer Agreements. Professor McKay has produced over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters as author or co-author, including two student textbooks. Notable publications comprise 'The regulation of health data sharing in Africa: a comparative study' (2024, Journal of Law and the Biosciences), 'Covid-19 and its implications for the law of non-international armed conflict: the case of Mozambique' (2024), 'What constitutes adequate legal protection for the collection, use and sharing of mobility and location data in health care in South Africa?' (2023), 'A response to Thaldar et al. (2023): Data sharing governance in sub-Saharan Africa during public health emergencies' (2023), and 'Race in health research: considerations for researchers and research ethics committees' (2023). She has delivered papers and keynote addresses at more than 30 national and international conferences, such as 'The Recalcitrant Chatbot: Liability for Medical Negligence in the Age of AI'. As editor of the African Human Rights Law Journal and deputy editor of the Journal of Contemporary Roman Dutch Law, she contributes to scholarly discourse. Additionally, she serves as deputy chairperson of a South African university medical faculty's Research Ethics Committee, provides ethical advice to a fertility clinic, and is a member of the Centre for Human Rights NGO. In 2003, she received a scholarship from the USA National Institutes of Health to study bioethics, virology, and epidemiology at Yale University School of Medicine while advancing her doctoral research.