MEDINA ARELLANO, MARIA DE JESUS

I am a permanent full time professor and researcher at the Legal Research Institute in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She is a member of the National Research System in Mexico, SNI- level 3, in Mexico’s SECIHTI (before CONACyT). I conducted a sabbatical research stay at the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy at the Department of Law of the University of Manchester in the UK and an academic fellowship at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, from October 2022 until September 2023.

I am a member of Mexican Society for Stem Cell Research since 2016. From November 2019, I am also a member of the Ethics Board of the National Council of Health in Mexico. From January 2019, I am a member of the University Ethics Committee of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. I am a member of Hinxton International Group. From 2028-2022 I was member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Bioethics.

In December 2008 I was recognised as the Young Academic Talent of the Year, an award granted by the Nayarit Government in Mexico. In 2010, I was awarded the UNAM-Alfonso Caso silver medal for outstanding achievement, as the best postgraduate student of the 2008 class in social sciences. In 2019 I obtained the medal of women excellence in science at UNAM, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and in 2020 she was granted with the price National University for Youth Scientists in Social Sciences at UNAM.

My work focuses on the research ethics and regulation of emerging biotechnologies in developing countries, such as: stem cell research, human genome editing and reproductive technologies. I conduct research on Global Health Ethics problems from a gender and legal critical studies perspectives. I am very much interested and involved in the development of academic teaching and research programs for young scholars in Mexico and Latin America to achieve more insights of the needs and intellectual contributions in this region. I also believe that transference of research knowledge to key stakeholders (e.g., judges and policy makers) is crucial to tackle down problems of injustices and gender vias, in that order, I also collaborate with the federal judicial branch, as well as civil organizations and health institutions in Mexico and Latin America as a way of fostering the inclusion of the seminal topics that require attention from academics and governmental institutions.