About me

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Welcome! I'm Isra Black.

I'm a Lecturer in Law at York Law School. My research covers and combines healthcare law and philosophy, with a particular substantive interest in end of life issues.

I'm also co-convenor of the Society of Legal Scholars Medical Law section, with Tracey Elliott.

I received my PhD in Law and Ethics from the Centre of Medical Law of Ethics, Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London in 2016. My doctoral research on assisted death was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

In 2016, I was a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University, and a Research Associate at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute. In 2015, I was a research associate in health law and human rights on the ALS-CarE project, based at the Klinikum Rechts der Isar, Technische Universität München. I was also a visiting researcher at the Fondation Brocher in the summers of 2013 and 2015.

If you'd like to get in touch, please contact me at isra.black [at] york.ac.uk.
Anthony Skelton, Lisa Forsberg, and Isra Black
— With Lisa Forsberg and Anthony Skelton at the Fondation Brocher in July 2015. (I'm on the right.)

Recent papers

Isra Black, ‘Refusing Life Prolonging Medical Treatment and the ECHR’ (2018) 38(2) OJLS 299 (free link).


Isra Black and Ásgeir Helgason, ‘Using motivational interviewing to facilitate death talk in end-of-life care: an ethical analysis’ (2018) 17 BMC Palliative Care 51 (open access).

Current work

A paper 'Physician assisted death through the medical exception', based on my doctoral thesis: 'Better off dead? Best interests assisted death'.

One paper with Ralf Jox for a volume edited by Sue Westwood on: 'Voluntary stopping of eating and drinking, palliative support, and moral uncertainty'.

A law and philosophy project on adolescent refusals of life sustaining treatment with Lisa Forsberg and Anthony Skelton. At the moment we're writing 'Transformative experience and adolescent refusals of life prolonging medical treatment' and 'Making philosophical sense of the normative power of adolescent medical consents and refusals'.

Some cycling pics