Penny Grubb

I have worked in academia since the 1980s and developed an interest in intellectual property issues through campaigning to help creators retain their rights in books, artwork and maps. I was an active international researcher in healthcare informatics for 10 years and am currently an active trade unionist.

In the 1990s, I was MD of a fledgling IT company that secured the endorsement of key areas within the UK healthcare sector.  Being unable to negotiate satisfactory IPR agreements on the software systems it had produced crystallised my interest in copyright and IPR. In my earlier career in this field I was one of the software engineers who developed the system that later found fame by highlighting serial killer Harold Shipman’s attempts to falsify patient records.

My writing has mostly been in healthcare informatics, software maintenance and related to my trade union work. Other than this, I have written on a freelance basis, contributing to newspapers and magazines on topics as diverse as the trials of parenting adolescents to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

I was first elected to the Board of ALCS in 2002 and in 2007 was appointed as its first independent Chair.

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