Hi, so my name is Emma Nance, I'm from the US, from New York,
and I studied english literature undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh.
And then last year I studied an LLM, so a masters of law,
in Medical Law and Ethics, also at the University of Edinburgh.
When I went to honours I was able to take this course called medicine and literature,
which was comprised of half english literature students,
and half medical students as part of their intercalated year, and I just had a
really, really good time listening to other people's perspectives, and the interdisciplinary
aspect of it, and I was asking my tutor if there was any other programme that she thought of because
I'd never done this interdisciplinary programme before, and she recommended that I look
into the medical law and ethics programme at the LLM, and kind of, you know, one thing led to another
and I ended up, last September, going on the medical ethics track, which was really exciting for
me because I'd never really heard of it mentioned like this,
and then just to, you know, really enjoy the bioethical discussions.
And it is a field that benefits from as many people as possible kind of
weighing in and giving their own justifications, and I really enjoyed being part of it.
So I knew that I didn't have a law background, I had an english literature background, and I thought
everyone else would have a law background, but it didn't turn out to be that way - it was a lot more
interdisciplinary, so my friends on the course who did have a law background, but then others who
had a nursing background, or had a philosophy background, or had - funnily enough, there
were two dentists on the course - so [it was] really just comprised of a lot of different people, who
were all interested in bioethics, and asking and answering questions from different
legal, or social, or ethical perspectives. And like, those all ended up in very interesting
conversations - like across the board. I think we also had some intercalated medical students as well,
and so we were all able to kind of see what it was like, what, you know,
when people were making these decisions, or what it was like from a legal analysis,
and all kind of centering around these questions.
I'm currently in my sixth winter in Scotland, and I've had a lot of
people say to me like, why would you sign up for the extra time?, but even I think during the
summer, and in the beginning of the pandemic when, you know, we weren't allowed to go anywhere and
we weren't allowed to travel, I still didn't feel that trapped in Edinburgh because there were-
one, I've made a lot of choices to be here, and with friends in terms of living situations as well,
but the second part is there's a lot of nature here where I could, you know, go out to the Meadows
and take a walk if I needed to clear my head, or there's Arthur's Seat right there,
or Portobello Beach or Blackford Hill and Braehill,
and I thought that was really special, just in the middle
of a capital city being able to walk around and, you know, kind of think through an argument that
I was trying to write for my dissertation.
Dr [Ted] Dove sent a personal email to us as soon as the -
I think Peter Mathieson sent out the email that the school was closed - and he had sort of a great
like, 'don't worry, if you want to go home we will support you, we'll email whoever's necessary, just
as long as you're safe' and I've had a couple of other personal tutors reach out and say
you know, 'it's a very difficult time, let us know if you need any adjustments' and I know that for,
at least for this programme as well, like it did feel very personal, and I think there
were only 14 people on the course, but it did feel like they cared where we were and that
they would be trying to support us.
We went into quarantine around March, and it was a difficult time
because I had never thought of writing a dissertation just from my desk, as you
can see from here [laughs] I always thought that I'd go into the library and just kind of work in the Law
School until, you know, all hours of the night, but actually having to like sit down and
study, I really struggled with that for a while, and just being sort of cooped up in one place - but then
kind of getting back into a routine was very helpful for me, and I had skype calls with
my dissertation supervisor, which kind of helped put all of this time that I felt like I
had to do my dissertation into more manageable chunks of, you know, every couple of weeks
having a deadline where I was writing more sources down, and writing, and reading through a
lot of my papers, and then I'm able to kind of like, finally narrow that down and down and down, until - I
think it was September, when I finally submitted my dissertation, but that process, you know, it was
it was during a very difficult time, you know, in everyone's lives, during a pandemic, but
I thought that the law school handled it very well.
Actually, just in February, so right before everything,
I found out that I was accepted to a Wellcome Trust funded PhD
called One Health Models of Disease: Science, Ethics, and Society,
and that's based in the Roslin Institute in Easter Bush
where they made Dolly the sheep in the 90s, so again it was a little bit of a jump from English
lit to law, and then to the lab, so in October I started doing gene editing, which
was fascinating for me, who hadn't been in a lab since my high school days of biology, to then be
in the room with all of these scientists and people with STEM backgrounds, and kind of
figuring out how to swim in this, but it's been a really fantastic year so far so that probably
answers your question from earlier of what I'm doing in Edinburgh again for my sixth year.