DrSarah Fulham-Mcquillan

Dr Sarah Fulham-McQuillan is an Assistant Professor in Sutherland School of Law. She researches and lectures in Tort Law, Constitutional Law, and English Public Law, and created the Medical Law module which has been running in Sutherland School of Law since 2020. Sarah is Deputy Director of the UCD Centre for Constitutional Studies and was previously joint Staff Editor of the UCD Law Review.

A former Government of Ireland Scholar, she completed her undergraduate and doctoral studies at Trinity College Dublin. Sarah also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning obtained from University College Dublin.

Sarah's monograph, entitled, "Redefining the Medical Negligence Action: A Doctor's Duty to Take Care", is forthcoming with Hart Publishing, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, having been accepted into Hart's distinguished Private Law Series. It is the first and only monograph in the UK and Ireland to focus on a doctor's duty of care in medical negligence law. It provides a novel analysis of the medical negligence action, drawing on theoretical concepts, negligence norms, and jurisdictional norms such as constitutional rights protection in Ireland and human rights protection in the UK, to create a new perspective on existing case law. Sarah has been awarded an NUI Publication Grant in respect of this monograph.

She has published her work at home and abroad, most recently including a sole-authored full length article in a leading international journal, Law Quarterly Review ("Infringement of Autonomy as Damage in Medical Negligence", January 2023).

Sarah is an emerging scholar in the field of obligations, holding an extensive international network on the subject and through her work on the public law/private law divide. She has presented her research at more than 22 conferences nationally and internationally, most recently including the Obligations IX Conference at the University of Melbourne, at the Public Law Conference, University of Cambridge and the Law and Society Association Annual Conference, Washington DC, for which she was awarded funding from the Sutherland School of Law Individual Research Competition. 

Sarah has been an invited guest speaker at Harvard Law School on the Project on the Foundations of Private Law, at the Obligations Discussion Group at the University of Oxford, and at Fordham University in New York.

Sarah is in receipt of a number of research awards including the FitzPatrick Family Foundation award for ongoing interdisciplinary projects with colleagues in the School of Philosophy and the School of Medicine. 

She has contributed to national media on constitutional law, tort law and medical law issues with articles published in the Irish Times and radio interviews with RTÉ and Newstalk FM.

In recognition of her commitment to teaching and learning, Sarah was nominated by 74 students from across all of her modules for a UCD College of Social Sciences and Law Teaching Excellence Award, which she was awarded in 2020.

She was subsequently awarded a UCD University Teaching Excellence Award in 2021, one of only ten awardees in UCD.

Sarah was then nominated by the College of Social Sciences and Law for an European Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Social Sciences and Humanities 2021, organised by the Central European University, Vienna.

In addition to convening the Torts subject section for the Society of Legal Scholars of the UK and Ireland, Sarah was Associate Convenor with Convenors Prof Eoin Carolan (UCD) and Prof Jason Varuhas (Melbourne) of the major biennial Public Law Conference, hosted by UCD in July 2022.

Sarah has been an elected member of UCD's Academic Council.

She was also elected to sit on the Executive Committee of the Society of Legal Scholars in the UK and Ireland. As a result, Sarah acted as Trustee for the SLS, registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales. Sarah also represents UCD on the SLS Council. She is a former elected council member of the Irish Association of Law Teachers, and a member of the Socio-Legal Studies Association in the UK and the Law and Society Association in the US.

Prior to joining UCD as the McCann FitzGerald Assistant Professor in Law and Business, Sarah taught at Trinity College Dublin during her PhD. 

Sarah's research includes tort law, constitutional law, the public law/private law divide, medical law and bioethics, philosophical foundations of common law obligations, public health law and safeguarding vulnerable adults. She welcomes enquiries from potential doctoral candidates wishing to undertake research in these areas.