Heloise Robinson

Heloise Robinson conducts research on law and philosophy, with a primary focus on issues pertaining to bioethics, disability, and feminist legal theory. She joins UBC in the summer of 2026, having previously taught at the University of Oxford, including as the Singer Fellow in Law at Exeter College. She has also been an Academic Visitor at the Uehiro Oxford Institute, to conduct research in applied ethics. Dr. Robinson holds a DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford (passing her viva with no corrections), as well as an Oxford MA by resolution, and first studied law at McGill University (BCL, LLB). Having lived abroad for many years, she is delighted to be back in her home province of British Columbia. 

Dr. Robinson is the author of Selecting against Disability in the Liberal State: Choice, Equality, and the Limits of Neutrality (Cambridge University Press, 2026). The book led to an international symposium held at the University of Oxford, and will be featured in an issue in the Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies. She is also one of the editors of Philosophical Foundations of Disability Law (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), and is now working on a second monograph, provisionally titled Pregnant Personhood: An Argument About Equality (under contract). In this book she is developing a new argument on the status of pregnant women. She has also been the guest editor of a journal special issue on disability and ethics, and is now as co-editor putting together another journal special issue, on the history of eugenics. Her current research also focuses on some questions concerning tort law and pregnancy, and tort law and equality.

Dr. Robinson has presented her research at a large range of major conferences and institutions. Amongst many others, these include for example: the World Congress of Bioethics; the International Academy of Law and Mental Health (IALMH) congress (in Barcelona and Montreal); an International Symposium of Ethics in Perinatology (Belgium); the Feminist Jurisprudence Discussion Group (University of Oxford); the European Human Rights Law Conference (University of Cambridge); the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics (EACME) Annual Conference; and the Oxford Disability Law and Policy Conference (Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Oxford).

Prior to moving into academia, Dr. Robinson interned at the ICC International Court of Arbitration in Paris, and completed a clerkship with Mr Justice Marc Nadon at the Federal Court of Appeal, and Madam Justice Pierrette Rayle (part-time) at the Quebec Court of Appeal. She also worked at Stikeman Elliott LLP in their Montreal and London offices, pre-qualification, and then as an Associate at White & Case LLP in London. As a student she was an editor of the McGill Law Journal, and with her team won the Vis Moot. She is bilingual, and has studied and worked professionally in both French and English. She was called to the Bar of Ontario in 2009.

At Oxford Dr. Robinson taught Medical Law and Ethics as both an undergraduate (equivalent to JD) subject, and in graduate (BCL) seminars, as well as Disability and Equality, a new course she set up as a Jurisprudence option, and which was apparently the first course on disability offered by the Oxford Law Faculty. She also taught some other subjects, including Tort Law, and Jurisprudence. In addition, she supervised graduate research in Oxford in medical law and ethics, and assessed DPhil research in medical law and ethics, disability law, and legal philosophy. At UBC she is teaching Torts, and Disabilities and Law.