Fondation Brocher | Elena Caruso

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Elena Caruso

Postdoctoral researcher - University of Bristol Law School
United Kingdom

02.07.2026-28.07.2026

Is there any ‘good’ abortion law?

This project has three research objectives:
1) To develop new knowledge on abortion legality, and on the relationship between legalisation, decriminalisation and accessibility.
2) To clarify what the advantages and disadvantages of ad hoc abortion legislation are.
3) To identify the principles of a ‘good’ abortion regulation.
Planned outcome:
I intend to submit one journal article provisionally entitled ‘Is there a “good” abortion law?’ to a leading public law journal (e.g. International Journal of Constitutional Law or a similarly ranked journal).

I am a law researcher specialised in reproductive rights. I am a senior research associate at the University of Bristol Law School. I am also a fellow of the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program based at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. At the University of Catania, I am a fellow of the Legal Clinic ‘Coesione e Diritto’ and of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies ‘GENUS’.

As a member of the ‘Contragestive Time’ Wellcome Project Discovery Award, I am working on a new project on the history of contragestives, a fertility control method that works in the window after fertilisation and before early abortion is possible. Simultaneously, I am finalising my first monograph, Becoming Legal (under contract with Cambridge University Press), which will focus on the feminist movement and the legalisation of abortion in 1970s Italy.

Previously, I worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo Department of Political Science to develop my solo-project on self-managed abortion and the law, funded by the AMTD Fellowship (2023-2025). I held or I will hold visiting positions at the Brocher Foundation (forthcoming), University of Granada's Faculty of Medicine, University of Bristol Law School, European University Institute's Law Department, University of Technology Sydney's Faculty of Law y, Melbourne Law School, Osgoode Hall Law School, and the Cardiff School of Law and Politics. As an Erasmus student, I conducted a semester of research at the University of Bonn Law School.

I obtained a PhD from Kent Law School in July 2023 (passed without corrections), funded by the Economic Social Research Council (ESRC) and Kent Law School. I hold a MA in Law (Laurea Magistrale in Giurisprudenza) from the University of Catania with the highest grade, and an LLM in International Law from the University of Kent with distinction. I was awarded the ‘Head of School Prize for Academic Excellence’ from the University of Kent, and my name was included in the list of the best law students of Catania Law School (Anagrafe dei Laureati Eccellenti).

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