Camillia Kong

Profile

Camillia joined Queen Mary University of London as a Strategic Senior Lecturer in the Department of Law and Fellow of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences. Previously she was the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded Judging Values and Participation in Mental Capacity Law Project and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research, Birkbeck College. Camillia is also a Research Associate at the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford.  She completed her PhD at LSE and was previously a Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford and Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Kent. She has held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Ethox Centre.

Undergraduate Teaching

• LAW6163 Health Law

Research

Camillia has research expertise on medico-legal conceptualisation of mental capacity, the ethics of psychiatry and psychiatric genomics, and the hermeneutics and phenomenology of mental disorder. She has particular interest in intersections between Western and African normative thought and practice in approaches to mental disorder and intellectual disability. Other areas of Camillia’s work explore how relational and gender contexts impact the development of selfhood and mental disorder and conceptions of intellectual disability, and how these contexts intersect with the construction of legal agency.

Funded research

• Camillia is the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project, Reproducing Borders and Bordering Reproduction: Access to Care for Women from Ethnic Minority and Migrant Groups (2024-2027).
• Co-Investigator of the ESRC-funded project, Voicing Loss: Meanings and Implications of Participation by Bereaved People in Inquests.
• Camillia was Principal Investigator of a Wellcome Small Grant project, Re-examining the ‘Global’ in Global Mental Health: African understandings of mental disorders and intellectual disabilities.
• Camillia was also the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project, Judging Values and Participation in Mental Capacity Law project (2018-2022) at Birkbeck College. View the final project report for the Judging Values project [PDF 5,832KB].

Publications

Books:

• Kong, C., Coggon, J., Cooper, P., Dunn, M., and Ruck Keene, A. (eds.), Capacity, Participation and Values in Comparative Legal Perspective (Bristol University Press, 2023).
• Kong, C. & Ruck Keene, A., (2018) Overcoming Challenges in the Mental Capacity Act 2005: Practical Guidance for Working with Complex Issues (foreword by Anselm Eldergill, Jessica Kingsley Publishers). Reviewed by:
  • Alyson Blamey in The British Journal of Social Work [2021] 51(3), 1121–1122
• Kong, C. (2017) Mental Capacity in Relationship: Decision-Making, Dialogue, and Autonomy (Cambridge University Press). Reviewed by:
  • Jonathan Herring, Legal Studies [2019] 39(1), 185-186
  • John Coggon, Journal of Law and Society [2018] , 45(2) 316-322
  • Beverley Clough, Medical Law Review [2019] 27(1), 171-180

Articles:

• ‘Kong C., Jacobson, J., Cooper, P. (Forthcoming). 'The humanising imperative for effective participation: Humean virtues and the limits of procedural justice,’ International Journal of Law in Context.
• Chua, H., Kong, C., Dunn, M. (2025). ‘The Two Lives of the Mental Capacity Act: Rethinking East-West Binaries in Comparative Analysis’, Medical Law Review.
• Kong, C., Coggon, J., Dunn, M. (2024). ‘Giving Meaning to Values in Mental Capacity Law’, Law Quarterly Review.
• Kong, C. (2023). The Phenomenology and Ethics of P-Centricity in Mental Capacity Law. Law and Philosophy, 42(2), 145-175.
• Kong, C., Stickler, R., Cooper, P., Watkins, M., & Dunn, M. (2022). Justifying and practising effective participation in the Court of Protection: an empirical study. Journal of Law and Society, 49(4), 703-725.
• Kong, C., Stickler, R., Cooper, P., Watkins, M., Dunn, M.,  (2022) ‘The ‘Human Element’ in the Social Space of the Courtroom: Framing and Shaping the Deliberative Process in Mental Capacity Law’, Legal Studies: 1-20. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/lst.2022.19
• Coggon, J., Kong, C. (2021) ‘From Best Interests to Better Interests? Values, Unwisdom, and Objectivity in Mental Capacity Law’, The Cambridge Law Journal,80(2), 245-273. doi:10.1017/S0008197321000283
• Kong, C. Campbell, M., Kpobi, L., Swartz, L., Atuire, C. (2021) ‘The Hermeneutics of Recovery: Facilitating Dialogue Between African and Western Mental Health Frameworks’, Transcultural Psychiatry, doi: 10.1177/13634615211000549. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33761813.
• Kong, C., Coggon, J., Dunn, M., & Keene, A. R. (2020). An aide memoire for a balancing act? Critiquing the ‘balance sheet’approach to best interests decision-making. Medical law review, 28(4), 753-780, doi:10.1093/medlaw/fwaa027
• Atuire, C. A., Kong, C., & Dunn, M. (2020). Articulating the sources for an African normative framework of healthcare: Ghana as a case study. Developing World Bioethics, 20(4), 216-227.
• Kong, C. (2019). Constructing female sexual and reproductive agency in mental capacity law. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 66, 101488.
• Kong, C., Efrem, M., & Campbell, M. (2020). Education versus screening: the use of capacity to consent tools in psychiatric genomics. Journal of Medical Ethics, 46(2), 137-143.
• Kong, C. (2019). Ethical dangers of facial phenotyping through photography in psychiatric genomics studies. Journal of Medical Ethics, 45(11), 730-735.
• Kamaara, E., Kong, C., & Campbell, M. (2020). Prioritising African perspectives in psychiatric genomics research: Issues of translation and informed consent. Developing World Bioethics, 20(3), 139-149.
• Kong, C., Coggon, J., Dunn, M., & Cooper, P. (2019). Judging values and participation in mental capacity law. Laws, 8(1), 3.
• Kong, C. (2019). Nurture before responsibility: self-in-relation competence and self-harm. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 26(1), 1-18.
• Kong, C., & Singh, I. (2019). The ethics of global psychiatric genomics: multilayered challenges to integrating genomics in global mental health and disability—A position paper of the Oxford Global Initiative in Neuropsychiatric GenEthics (NeuroGenE). American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics, 180(8), 533-542.
• Kong, C., Dunn, M., & Parker, M. (2017). Ethical translations of Psychiatric Genomics into mental health practice: response to commentaries. The American Journal of Bioethics, 17(6), W3-W5.
• Kong, C., Dunn, M., & Parker, M. (2017). Psychiatric genomics and mental health treatment: setting the ethical agenda. The American Journal of Bioethics, 17(4), 3-12.
• Kong, C. (2015). The space between second-personal respect and rational care in theory and mental health law. Law and Philosophy, 34(4), 433-467.
• Kong, C. (2015). The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Article 12: Prospective Feminist Lessons against the “Will and Preferences” Paradigm. Laws, 4(4), 709-728.
• ‘Kong, C. (2014). Beyond the balancing scales: the importance of prejudice and dialogue in A Local Authority v E and Others. Child & Fam. LQ, 26, 216.
• Kong, C. (2013). Hume and practical reason: a non-sceptical interpretation. History of Political Thought, 34(1), 89-113.
• Kong, C. (2012). The normative source of Kantian hypothetical imperatives. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 20(5), 661-690.
• Kong, C. (2010).  ‘The Long Shadow of Aristotelian Naturalism in the Development of Ethics’, a critical notice of Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics, A Historical and Critical Study, Vol. I: From Socrates to the Reformation (Oxford: OUP, 2007), International Journal of Philosophical Studies 18:1.

Book Chapters:

• Kong, C. (2023) ‘Consenting for Prevention: Ethics, Capacity, and Psychiatric Genomics’, in Mary Donnelly and Brendan Kelly, eds., Routledge Handbook of Mental Health Law (Routledge).
• Kong, C. (2022). ‘The Significance of Strong Evaluation and Narrativity in Supporting Capacity’, in Mary Donnelly et al., eds., Supporting Legal Capacity in Socio-Legal Context (Hart).
• Kong C. (2022). ‘Balancing Prevention and Respect: The Ethical Stakes of a Psychiatric Genomics Lens for Mental Disorder and Intellectual Disability’, in Evangelia Eirini Tsermpini et al., eds., Psychiatric Genomics (Elsevier).
• Kong C. (2020).  ‘Critical Sankofaism and Hermeneutics: The Case of Male Suicide in Ghana’, in Kenneth Fulford et al., eds., International Perspectives in Values-Based Mental Health Practice – Case Studies and Commentaries (Springer Nature)
• Kong C. (2019). ‘The Problem of Mental Capacity in Self-Harming Egosyntonic Disorder’, in Thana Campos, Jonathan Herring and Andelka M. Phillips, eds., Philosophical Foundations of Medical Law (Oxford University Press)
• Kong, C. (2018). ‘Cultural Translation, Human Meaning, and Genes: Why Interpretation Matters in Psychiatric Genomics’, in Yaw A. Frimpong-Mansoh and Caesar A. Atuire, eds., Bioethics in Africa: Theories and Praxis (Vernon Press).

Public Engagement

The Judging Values and Participation in Mental Capacity Law project team produced two publicly available professional development videos targeting Court of Protection practitioners on YouTube:

• Communication and Participation in the Court of Protection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuEtw2rnqBw
• Making Values Matter in the Court of Protection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfSmzITspzs

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