School of Law

Dr Bonginkosi Shozi holds the degrees of Bachelor of Laws (LLB), and Master’s of Laws (LLM) in Constitutional Law, Theory and Human Rights Litigation, and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), all obtained from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

He is currently a postdoctoral research scholar at the Institute for Practical Ethics, at the University of California San Diego. He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at UKZN’s School of Law, affiliated with the Health Law and Ethics Research Interest Group.

Dr Shozi’s conducts research on the legal, ethical and human rights implications of novel technologies. This includes biotechnological innovations — such as CRISPR — as well as assisted reproductive technologies, and pharmaceutical products. His doctoral thesis, funded by the National Research Foundation and the UKZN African Health Research Flagship, is titled “An Afrocentric approach to CRISPR-Cas9: Analysing the use of genetic technologies in human reproduction through the lens of human rights and African values,” and investigated critical legal, ethical and human rights issues emanating from the prospect of heritable human genome editing from an African perspective. His research also extends to issues of global and regional healthcare policy regarding access to medicines on the African continent.

Through his work, Dr Shozi aims at positively influencing policy development. To this end, he also serves in a number of institutions aimed at providing input on the governance of novel technologies. In 2021, Dr Shozi was elected as a Board Member of the Association for Responsible Research and Innovation in Genome Editing (ARRIGE). He was also invited to serve as a member of the South African Medical Research Council’s (SAMRC) Bioethics Advisory Panel working group on gene editing.

Dr Shozi has been described as a ‘prolific author’, whose numerous works have featured in a number of prominent journals both internationally and abroad. One of his works was awarded the 2021 Yunus Mohammed Public Interest Award for published articles on Public Interest Law and Business Ethics in the category “National award for the best publications in a peer reviewed journal”.

Dr Shozi is an alumnus of the Judge Malcolm Wallis Clerkship Programme, having been a clerk for Judge Malcolm JD Wallis of the Supreme Court of Appeals during 2018.

He has the distinction of being the youngest person to author a chapter in Lexis Nexis’ Law of South Africa (LAWSA) legal encyclopedia in its over 40-year history as of 2021.