Visiting Researcher
2022

Hrefna D. Gunnarsdóttir is joining the Petrie-Flom Center as a Visiting Researcher in autumn 2022. During her stay at the center, Hrefna will be working on transparent use of patients’ health data for research purposes, within the Collaborative Research Program in Biomedical Innovation Law. Hrefna’s research interests are diverse, but can be broadly framed within human dignity in health and health research regulation. She is a board member of Nordic Per Med Law, a network working with legislation for modern medicine, and serves on the international experts panel of the Genetic Discrimination Observatory. She is a member of Justice in the Arctic Working Group, and is specifically interested in health law and research reciprocity in the environmental, societal and cultural context of the circumpolar North. Between Copenhagen and Reykjavik, Hrefna teaches health and human rights law, social welfare law, EU law and ESC rights, and shorter seminars on the use of health data in emerging technologies and on gender autonomy, trans bodily integrity and IGM.

Prior to academia, Hrefna practiced as an Attorney-at-Law at Réttur – Aðalsteinsson & Partners, a litigation and human rights law firm based in Reykjavík, Iceland. She has contributed to policy making of the Icelandic government and the Icelandic Bar Association, and to research with the Human Rights Institute at the Univ. of Iceland. Her experience also includes variety of legal and cross-sectoral projects in different regional and country context ranging between the archipelago of Svalbard and Tamil Nadu in India. She has held two consultancies with the UNHCR where she mapped the status of stateless persons including their access to health care, and has provided legal advice on behalf of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe via European Lawyers in Lesvos, Greece.

Hrefna holds a MA (Disaster Management) from School of Global Health, Univ. of Copenhagen, Mag. Juris (Law) and BA (Law) from Univ. of Iceland. She is currently a PhD candidate at Centre for Advanced Studies in Biomedical Innovation Law at Univ. of Copenhagen. In June 2022, Hrefna received a Holberg Prize scholarship to present at the 2022 Masterclass on Technology and the Human Future with Holberg Prize Laureate Prof. Sheila Jasanoff, John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.