Third Meeting of the DS-I Africa Consortium
3 November - 9 November 2023

Dr Marietjie Botes - Participant

Research for Ethical Data Science in Southern Africa (REDSSA) (Project Manager/Coordinator)

Dr Marietjie Botes is a project coordinator at the Division of Medical Ethics and Law, affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Department of Medicine, at Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa. Marietjie has transitioned from a 20-year career as a practicing attorney in health law and biotechnology to academia focusing on interdisciplinary research in the intersection between science, technology, law, and ethics. She holds the degrees of BProc, LLB, LLM (Intellectual Property Law), and LLD (Biotechnology Law). Her research interests include the regulation and ethics involved in advanced medical products such as gene therapies, gene, and stem cell research, the use of big (geospatial) data in the context of health emergencies and pandemics, Digital Health technologies - in particular with regard to implanted devices such as Brain-Computer Interfaces and their impact on fundamental rights, including online behavioural manipulation and how it shapes debates around digital ethics and its push towards digital constitutionalism. Marietjie published widely on these topics, both nationally and internationally, and served as co-editor for the special edition on Digital Ethics for the Humanities and Social Sciences Communications Journal (Springer Nature). She is an elected member of ASSAf involved with the second consensus study on gene therapies in South Africa, and one of the invited experts and co-authors of the SA Country Reports on COVID-19 in which she addressed various legal issues with regard to pandemic management.