Dr McMahon is particularly interested in the regulation of emerging health technologies, and in the role of ethics in the patenting of health-related inventions.

Her recent projects include work funded by the British Academy examining the divergent legal approaches to gene patentability in the EU, US, and Canada.

Dr McMahon’s PhD from the University of Edinburgh examined the institutional influences on the interpretation of the morality provisions in the European patent system for biotechnological inventions.

She joins Maynooth University from Durham University, where she was an assistant professor in biolaw and co-director of the Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences (2017-2018).

Prior to this, she was a lecturer in law at Newcastle University (2014-2017) and previously an AHRC research fellow on the interdisciplinary ‘Banking (On) the Brain’ project at the University of Edinburgh.

Dr McMahon holds a BCL and LLM (Law, Technology and Governance) from NUI Galway.