Chrystala Fakonti - Academic Staff

Chrystala’s research interests lie within criminal law and legal theory. Her work to date has mostly focused on questions relating to the right to die and the role of motives in criminal liability. Her doctoral thesis examined how to reform substantive criminal law by creating two new defences to achieve a more lenient approach to cases of euthanasia and assisted suicide in England. Her broader interests extend to other aspects of criminal law, such as fair labelling, criminalisation and related topics within medical ethics, legal and moral philosophy.

Chrystala teaches across a range of law courses in the School of Justice. The subjects include Criminal Law, EU Law, Rights and Responsibilities, Medicine and the Law and other professional courses.

Chrystala achieved a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from the University of Lancaster. Following this, she continued her postgraduate studies (LLM) at the University of Edinburgh in the field of ‘criminal law and criminal justice’. She then pursued further research in this field by conducting her doctoral research in the area of criminal law, observing euthanasia and assisted suicide from a criminal law perspective and constructing a new legalisation proposal. She completed this in 2022.

Her doctoral research was in the area of criminal law, observing euthanasia and assisted suicide from a criminal law perspective, and constructing a new legalisation proposal. The PhD thesis was entitled ‘Reforming the Criminal Law on Assisted Dying: A Proposal for new Defences’ and was completed in 2022.

More specifically, over the past years, her research interests have focused on the right to die in criminal law, the differentiation between offences and defences, fair labelling, the role of compassionate motives in criminal liability, along with the allocation of the burden of proof in new defences.

Email: Email:Dr Chrystala Fakonti

Dr Chrystala Fakonti

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